Try to remember
by Faff
Summary: Sixteen year old Kenny McKormick must adapt to his new life in Gotham City, while the same is also true for his eldritch alter ego, Mysterion. But while the agnostic angel of Denver makes his mark on Gotham, the Justice League and hero community at large must adapt to the emergence of this little mystery person who knows far more than he lets on…
1. I am Mysterion

Try to remember.

Summary: Sixteen year old Kenny McKormick must adapt to his new life in Gotham City, while the same is also true for his eldritch alter ego, Mysterion. But while the agnostic angel of Denver makes his mark on Gotham, the Justice League and hero community at large must adapt to the emergence of this little mystery person who knows far more than he lets on…

Chapter 1: I am Mysterion.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or Young Justice in any way, shape or form.

—?M?—

One thing Mysterion could never do, was forget. Whatever happened that passed other people by, he had sworn to remember.

When he died, it slipped their minds, yet it stuck in his.

When all evidence of the Gulf crisis vanished, the people didn't see the changes, but Mysterion saw every single one.

When the thousands of deaths caused by Cthulhu were undone, no one noticed, except Mysterion.

When Captain Hindsight no longer appeared, nobody cared, while Mysterion wondered why.

The people, the government, the law, his friends, his family, the news, the Justice League. When their minds were made to forget. Mysterion remembered.

—?M?—

He let the stormy night carry him over the rooftops of his new city, running over the rain-slick concrete of Gotham's downtown buildings. Ears bristling for any sign of trouble, and this being Gotham it was not long until he heard the city cry out.

Three men cornering a young boy in an alley, one man armed with a knife, one with a gun, the third unarmed and delivering threats.

"Steal from us? You little shit. You got away with a beating last time Todd, this time though, you're dead!" The gruff looking guy cracked his knuckles menacingly, slowly approaching the kid who couldn't have been older than nine or ten.

The boy didn't look afraid though, he was too busy looking for an escape, his eyes darting around desperately. He kept his fists up, prepared to fight back, even though his opponents were bigger than him, and armed.

Then out of nowhere a shape dropped from the fire escape, landing heavily on the man with the pistol. The crook's gun went off, drawing a sudden start and two shocked sounds from the other criminals. The bullet had flown off and hit the wall, while the gunman was now being subdued on the ground by a dark, shadowy figure.

"Batman!" The knife wielder shouted, panic stricken, diving forward and plunging his knife towards the caped figure.

The vigilante drew himself around, bringing with him the struggling body of the gunman. This vigilante thrust the gunman between himself and the knife, using the crook as a human shield.

As the knife sank through the coat of the criminal, the unarmed man and the boy got a good view of this caped crusader… They did not see Batman. What they saw was a disheveled, soaking wet character, wearing a ratty grey costume with a ragged dark purple cape. A green question mark on a spring bobbled limply atop his head, and what was visible of his face beneath the damp hood and half mask, was an angry scowl. If this was Batman then he'd had a bad night, and suffered some serious budget cuts.

What happened next was not a poised execution of precise martial arts, or a fluid and efficient act of crime fighting. What followed was a brutal street fight, a beatdown which the mysterious new vigilante was most inarguable the master of.

He pressed his shield into the knife wielder, ensuring the blade could not be withdrawn easily. As the human shield was hefted into the knifeman, the two smashed together and fell to the ground in a messy heap. One of them wailing in pain as the knife twisted inside him, thanks to the nuances of physics and momentum working against him. The other man hastily tried to remove the blade, while the wounded one flopped about in pain on top of him.

The vigilante had left them when they clattered to the ground, and turned on the third man. Surging forward with a look of fury in his eyes.

Green-gloved fists came in fast, smashing past his hastily raised arms and evading his guard. The blows connected with the criminal's stomach, then his face, and kept on returning until the man lay limply on the ground.

As quickly as he had leapt on the unarmed crook, he sprang back at the others. The knifeman had disentangled himself from his friend, and was looking between him and the vigilante, unsure whether to stick it out or cut his losses.

The vigilante gave him no choice, as he closed in, leaping up and kicking off of a dumpster, coming down on the crook like a sack of bricks. A clumsy knife swipe cut the mysterious crime fighters shoulder, but no sound was made to indicate that he had felt any pain. So the assault continued.

A few moments and nasty sounding punches later, the three would be muggers were bleeding and unconscious on the grimy alley floor. Then the two people still standing, merely stood there in silence.

"… You okay?" The vigilante asked, his voice distinguishable as that of a young man. Though it was rough, his tone still carried a note of concern for the boy.

"Yeah." The kid replied, not sounding grateful, or awe struck or anything that most kids his age would be after being saved by a vigilante.

"… You got a home to go to?" The hooded man asked after a mutual silence.

"Yeah." The kid answered again, his tone still uncaring.

Another moment passed before the vigilante asked, with a quiet understanding."… You gonna go there?"

"No…" The boy's gaze broke away from where he had been warily observing the man. "Not yet anyway."

The vigilante offered a grunt of acknowledgment, before inquiring. "Got somewhere to go in the meantime?"

"Yeah. Old lady in my building lets me stay sometimes, but she wasn't in when I left." The boy said, his voice losing some of its hostility.

"Can you get back there without pissing anyone off?" The vigilante asked, a slight smile and teasing tone making its way into the question.

The boy snorted in amusement. "I guess…" Then there was a more companionable silence between them, before the kid asked something. "You're new here, right?" To which the reply was a simple nod. "Does Batman know you're here?" The answer this time was a shake of the head in the negative. "Oh… Well he's gonna be pissed… The B-man doesn't like people moving in on his turf. Kinda like a mob boss like that… You met him yet?" Another shake of the head, the question mark on the vigilante's hood wobbling with the movement. "Don't let him scare you, he's just uptight."

"Understood." Replied the caped figure, thankfully. "Any more advice?"

The boy mulled it over for a second, before shrugging and saying. "Nothing much that you wouldn't guess… Don't let anybody push you around, that's how it works in this city. That's what makes Gotham different from everywhere else. No matter who you push, they'll push back harder, and then it'll build up from there until everybody's pushing everybody… You gotta learn that quick around here. But…" The boy paused, looking at the gun holstered to the vigilante's hip, the cold metal sticking out in his costume of dull grey. "I'm guessing you already know that…"

"Yeah." The crime fighter replied solemnly. Then he reached down and picked up the gun that the mugger had dropped when he first attacked. Turning it over in his hands, he checked the clip, flicked the safety on and held it out to the kid. "You know how to use one?"

"Yeah. My mom gives me hers when she has a client over. She tells me to bust in and hold it on 'em if it sounds like they're getting too pushy." The boy said, evenly.

"Anyone pushes you too far, really pushes you… You push back." The vigilante said as he put the gun into the boys hands.

"You're seriously giving me a gun?" The boy said, confusion and skepticism leaking into his tone. He held the heavy metal implement tentatively, before looking up at the hooded figure in front of him.

There was no reply, so the boy watched the vigilante bound up onto the dumpster, springboard off of its lid, latching onto the fire escape he had first entered from. In practiced movements he swung himself up, climbing the rusting metal, scaffolded rungs and railings with the ease of a monkey in the jungle. The light from the street reflecting off the surfaces that dripped and ran with rainwater, gliding slickly over the inky form of this vigilante as he ascended to the rooftops.

"Who the fuck are you?!" The kid shouted after him as the mysterious teenager crested the roof.

Stopping, silhouetted against the gibbous moon, cape blowing in the wind, the vigilante looked down at the young boy from the top of the building. And answered.

"I am Mysterion!"

—?M?—

As Mysterion shut the window behind him, taking down his hood and removing his half mask, he ceased being the elusive, little known hero and once again became, sixteen year old Kenny McKormick. The blonde haired, blue eyed kid from South Park, Colorado.

Kenny stood in his room and began to busy himself with examining his wound. Only sparing half a glance to check his alarm clock, which upon inspection revealed the time to be 3:44AM.

Sitting down on the edge of his bed, Kenny peeled away the sodden fabric of his shirt, which was wet with both blood and rain. Removing his shirt revealed a long thin, partly scabbed over gash. Inflicted by the knife earlier that night. It didn't look too serious, so Kenny moved over to his desk and withdrew a first aid kit.

There was always another option, which would essentially heal the wound straight away… But death was never a first resort for Kenny. If he killed himself here, sure, he would wake up in his bed with no sign of the knife's cut. But dying really, fucking, hurt. So no, he would not commit suicide for something so trivial as a little graze.

Now his reason for contemplating suicide over this, was because Kenny McKormick was born into un-life. For as long as he could remember he had been unable to die permanently. Instead of passing on, he'd always reconstituted in his bed. Waking up later as if nothing had happened, with no one who witnessed his death ever recalling it.

As he had grown, Kenny learnt to manipulate this curse to an extent. He could, thanks to the sheer number of times he had experienced death and the pains it brought with it, resist the pull of the grim reaper. Holding out against injuries and forces that most people would buckle under. He could also focus where he woke up after he'd slipped through death's fingers. No longer was he stuck waking up in that same cold room, in his old home in South Park. Now he could wake up anywhere he had slept. Thank whatever gods favoured him for that convenience, he thought, otherwise he'd be spending a lot of time on buses and trains simply trying to get back to where he needed to be.

Letting out a heavy sigh as he finished cleaning and bandaging the cut, Kenny once again looked over at his clock. 3:59AM. Recognising the time, and that he had school in a few hours, Kenny let the tiredness he had been holding back, wash over him. He had one thing to do before he slept though, even though he did it pretty sloppily. He hid his costume. Stripping it off and shunting it under his bed, before collapsing onto the soft sheets.

He'd conceal them properly when he woke up. For now though, Kenny would just try to bask in the relative luxury he now lived in.

—?M?—

That night, those same memories visited Kenny in his dreams, troubling him once more with visions of certain times.

Ten years old, him and his sister Karen being ushered out of that foster home in Greeley. The fundamentalist agnostics being manhandled out of their home by police officers. The children of the orphanage corralled by other cops, until it could be decided what would be done with them.

Kenny expected the whole event to be swept under the rug. All the orphans would return to their families if they still had them, and barely a second thought would be given to them after they had left police custody… Apparently not though. It had seemed that on that specific day six years ago, fate had decided to actually pay attention, and someone competent must have been making decisions for once.

Because instead of being sent back to their meth cooking, drug dealing, Pabst blue ribbon drinking parents. Kenny and Karen were shuffled off to another foster home, in Denver.

Time flew by at that point, from when they set foot in Denver to when they first met their adoptive parents, the Gothamites Mr and Mrs Dupuis. It was as if Kenny had stopped paying attention to time. He got by on a daily routine; go to school, do his best, protect Karen, go back to the orphanage, pull on the second skin that was his Mysterion suit, and then go out into the night to do his duty.

It had become mechanical, or at least, it seemed so through the lens of this dream. Back then it had been a nightmare. The streets of Denver harboured more secrets than anyone could have guessed at, had Mysterion not been there digging in the right places, looking for the wrong people praying to foul gods. The cult of Cthulhu had not died the last time, and he was certain upon leaving Denver, aged sixteen, that it had not died this time either.

But those intermediate years had made something out of him. It was hard to tell what, but it had a name and a purpose, and always did have one come to think of it… He was Mysterion. Keeper of Eldritch secrets, safeguard against those who wielded the cosmic power of deities so unfathomable, that they cannot be described. He was far cry from a boy playing superhero, he had been set on a path that led beyond the normal realms of understanding, and into the unknown.

The dream progressed. Now he was moving to Gotham city, and Kenny knew what that meant. He had not encountered any of the established superheroes before, unless you counted Captain Hindsight, which Kenny did not. Partly because no one remembered him, partly because he had just vanished off the face of the Earth, but mostly because fuck that guy.

Though back during the Gulf crisis things had been different. Cthulhu was tampering then, the Justice League had been silent, and any other heroes were absent. Then when all was said and done, everyone forgot. The world practically rewound, as if that had been a joke take, a deleted scene from reality. No one noticed, and certain things changed; BP Oil disappeared, as did Captain Hindsight. The hundreds of thousands of people killed, just reappeared without so much as a word. All except Justin Bieber, but to tell the truth Kenny wasn't too torn up about that.

Either way, when Kenny realised what had happened, had essentially not happened. Just like so many hundreds of deaths he had been through. Well that straw almost broke his back… But instead of it being the breaking point for Mysterion, Kenny came back stronger. After the Gulf crisis, that was when he went from wannabe, to hero.

When he stood with his friends on that one day, and asked what they should do now that Cthulhu was vanquished. When they stared at him with 'that' look, and said.

"… Kenny what the fuck are you talking about?"

It had almost broken his heart… People forgot, like they always did. But this time the scale was massive, the entire world forgot everything. Maybe they had to, perhaps it was natures way of dealing with the unknown mythos of the outer gods and their subordinates… Which left Kenny the only one remembering, for some flimsy, mostly unknown reason he was the one who had to remember everything the world needed to forget.

He took it as his job, his duty… Mysterion, warden of sanity, secret keeper of reality, the only person who ever remembers…

Then his alarm sang, and Kenny woke with a start. Rolling out of bed, he dragged himself away from his dreams of the past, and tried to get ready for his second day at Gotham Academy…

—?M?—


	2. Kids will be kids

Try to remember.

Chapter 2: Kids will be kids.

Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice or South Park. Not even slightly.

—?M?—

Kenny hurried downstairs, schoolbag in his hand he swept into the kitchen where he was greeted with a sight that he might never get used to. A happy family at the breakfast table. Or to be more accurate, a family who was eating breakfast in the first place, as well as one who weren't screaming their lungs raw at each other.

Jonathan and Marietta Dupuis left a lot to be desired as foster parents, but what they lacked, they certainly made up for in sheer effort and wealth. It's true that money couldn't buy you love, but it was sure as hell a nice change for Kenny and Karen McKormick.

"Good morning, Kenneth." Mr. Dupuis greeted him formally from where he sat at the fancy modern dining table, before swallowing down a spoonful of muesli.

Kenny nodded a greeting in return, as Mrs. Dupuis welcomed him somewhat more cheerfully. Maybe a little too cheerfully to not sound patronising. "Morning, Kenny! Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah." He lied, before grabbing a bowlful of the healthy, no doubt Whole Foods bought breakfast, and seating himself next to Karen. The mousy haired thirteen year old was picking away slowly at her bowl, delicately removing the bits of dried fruit and raisins that she didn't like. Bits that she discarded into Kenny's own bowl. "Morning Karen." He mumbled in the way he'd always done.

"G'morning Kenny." She answered in a distracted voice.

"You'd better finish up your bowl quickly Kenny, otherwise we'll be late." His bustling, middle aged foster mother said hurriedly, as she herself cleared away her bowl and spoon. Kenny complied and shovelled away his breakfast without much thought for manners, taste, or chewing. So he was finished and had cleared away his bowl before Karen was even halfway done with hers.

A few minutes later and the two siblings were seated in the back of Mr. Dupuis' car, being driven to their school here in Gotham. The prestigious Gotham Academy. All in all, despite the overtly modern, respectable style of the Dupuis', Kenny considered their adoption of him and Karen to be the best thing to ever happen to them.

Gotham was not an ideal city, being as it was, awash with crime, super criminals, violence, a man dressed as a Bat and a boy in tights. But it had nothing on the insane dangers of the town they had grown up in. That blind spot of reality that was South Park, Colorado. But if putting up with crime meant a good education for Karen, as well as excellent living conditions. Then Kenny would welcome it, as long as it remained the best thing for his sister.

After breezing through Gotham's richer residences, they eventually pulled into the parking lot of their school, said their farewells to their new parents, and headed into the academy.

Two days into their stint and already Kenny was reeling at the differences. It was as far from South Park as you could get, and while not quite as far from an inner-city Denver school, it was still a massive jump.

A school for the sons and daughters of the rich and famous, the affluent, the important and the dangerous. People such as the adopted son of Bruce Wayne, the daughter of Gotham's Police Commissioner, the scions of various important, old Gothamite families, not to mention the progeny of some of Gotham's 'respectable' criminals. The ones who were smart enough to keep all business above board anyway. All those sorts of people attended the academy, and now Kenny and Karen were among them. And they couldn't have been more out of place if they tried. Not even the smart, pristine uniforms could hide that fact.

Hopefully they could go about their time here normally, blend in with the rich kids and get on with their lives…

—?M?—

That lunchtime was the last time Kenny ever hoped that kids would not be kids, and that everyone would carry on as usual. Treating the presence of two new kids, from an entirely different background, with little or no hostility.

He'd been walking around the sunny grounds, keeping an eye out for Karen to see how she was getting along. When he finally located her, in a secluded area, surrounded by a tight knit circle of students, Kenny's heart turned to ice and sank to the pit of his stomach. He knew this formation well, it was a fighting circle, a bullying ring. The formation that kids got into when they were trying to hide something from teachers. He had heard her voice from its centre, and immediately strode over, elbowing his way though the throng of kids to get to the epicentre.

Karen was knelt on the ground, the contents of her school bag strewn about, her hair and uniform a mess, with another girl looming over her.

"Go on, orphan, cry. Come on, I wanna see you cry." The bully had long blonde hair, and was quite clearly one of the richer kids in the school. It was something about her demeanour, how she simply oozed arrogance and snobbish superiority.

Karen had no tears in her eyes, but she didn't look up at the girl either. She sat on the ground, trying to ignore the bully and collect her things. Something the blonde girl made difficult, as she kicked Karen's books away whenever she reached out to take them.

"I said, I want, to see you, cry!" The girl growled, before Kenny managed to shut her up.

He had forged a path through the crowd with ease, being bigger and stronger than most of them. In two short, quick steps he'd reached the blonde girl. Then he grabbed her shoulder, drew her around to face him, and delivered a sucker punch.

His fist connected just below her ribcage, doubling the girl over and forcing the air to evacuate her lungs with a highly undignified 'oof' sound. With her bent double, Kenny brought his fist back and caught ahold of her head. Tightly snatching a handful of her hair, he held her face still whilst he retreated his knee, then snapped it up and released her head at the same time. His knee impacted with a sickening crunch, and the bully's whole body was sent head over ass as he let her go.

Blood instantly began flowing from her most definitely broken nose, and an ear splitting scream tore itself from her mouth. She hit the ground with a 'crack' and lay there wailing, sobbing and rolling about while holding her face.

The whole circle had taken a step back, and painful gasps sounded from the assembled students with every hit. But Kenny was not done. He bent down, grabbed the blonde by the front of her blood stained blazer, and hoisted her up to look him in the eye.

She was quite a bit shorter than him, and probably couldn't see him clearly through the tears that streamed unbidden from her eyes. But she looked up at him nonetheless, with an expression that couldn't have been more terrified if it was Batman who was beating her up.

Then Kenny growled eight pointed words at her, and with how forebodingly threatening his voice sounded, it might as well have been the big bad bat for all any of them knew. "Karen McKormick, is off limits. Do you understand." He didn't shout, but his rage was brought across in spades.

Nothing made Kenny angrier than someone hurting his sister. So long as he was her brother, and while he had this unnatural ability to escape death, then he would not stand by as she was picked on. As she went without. As she suffered. So whoever it was threatening her, Kenny would be sure to let them know, they would never get away with it.

The bully gave a burbling, near hysterical gibbering sound as an answer, so Kenny just pushed her back down to the ground. Where she lay, sobbing across from the girl she had wanted to see cry.

Kenny turned back to Karen and was relieved to see she had collected up her books while he dealt with her nuisance. Wordlessly he helped her up, and they pushed their way out of the crowd.

The circle of students had grown since he'd entered it, and now various orbiting bunches of kids were waiting to see who emerged. Needless to say the whispering started immediately, and only increased when the outsiders saw the blonde girl lying in a sopping heap.

As Kenny escorted Karen further out, one outer group approached them. It consisted of three people, all about Karens age. A raven haired, blue eyed boy Kenny vaguely recognised from the news, a redhead he also thought he'd seen before, and a wide eyed blonde.

The boy spoke first, sounding impressed but also reproachful. "Not that I'm saying you shouldn't have stood up to her, but…"

The blonde girl jumped on the back of his sentence, her tone scandalised. "You are in big trouble, and not just from the school."

The siblings didn't stop to talk with them, as the sunny haired sixteen year old wanted to get as far away from the scene as the campus would allow. But the three followed, continuing to talk to them.

"Steph's right. That was Loretta Inzerillo. Her father's a fairly important crime boss." The redhead informed them. A fact which cause Kenny's expression to sour.

"Anyone who's stood up to her in the past has wound up, well… Usually in the hospital." Added the boy, carefully.

Kenny came to a stop now that they were a out of sight of where the 'fight' had taken place. Exhaling a fed-up breath, he spoke one word that conveyed all his thoughts on that. "… Fuck."

The three younger teens, bar Karen, looked a little shocked at his foul language, but the blue eyed boy chuckled humorously, saying. "That's one way of describing it. So yeah, you should watch out for a while because Loretta was definitely a little more than whelmed at your, treatment, of her."

Kenny shot the kid a confused look. "Whelmed?" Was all he asked, to which the redhead rolled her eyes and said. "Don't mind the idiot he's just, well, an idiot. I'm Barbara Gordon." She introduced smilingly, and that's when Kenny remembered her. A couple of photographs cropped up in the papers from time to time, of her with her father James Gordon, or to be precise, Police Commissioner James Gordon.

Following that revelation Kenny recalled the boy as well, just as Barbara introduced the other two. "The idiot is Dick Grayson. And this is Stephanie Brown."

"I'm Kenny McKormick." Self same teenager gave back, before gesturing gently to the girl shifting shyly by his side. "This is my sister, Karen."

The look he shared with the three was sufficient to tell them to talk to her. Kenny knew better than anyone that you needed friends. Friends protected each other, but more importantly in this case, friends protected Karen when he or Mysterion could not. And they seemed the right sort, especially since one was a police commissioner's daughter and one was the adopted kid of one of the richest men in the world.

Dick Grayson graciously took the hint, and started. "So Karen, where are you guys from?"

Just as their conversation got going, an announcement came on over the school tannoy system, sternly demanding.

 ** _"_** ** _Kenneth McKormick, report to the Principal's office immediately."_**

Their conversation froze as Dick, Barbara, Stephanie and Karen all looked to Kenny with mixed expressions of worry and pity.

All Kenny could say in reply was. "… Fuck."

—?M?—

Leaving the school much later than usual, Kenny surmised that it could've gone worse. A couple of weeks detention would not hurt him in the slightest, and the verbal assault he was likely to receive from his foster parents was negligible.

What did bother him though, was the car that had been following him for several blocks now. With tinted windows and an obscured license plate.

Barbara and Dick had warned him about this, but he'd be lying if he said he gave a damn. Being who he was, what did he care about this sort of thing? So as he turned down another street and the car came to a halt, Kenny prepared himself for a fight. He was not disappointed, as seven young men stepped out of the vehicle, followed by a blonde girl with a cast covering her nose.

Stopping in his tracks Kenny faced them fully, and feeling cocky he called out. "Out of hospital already, Loretta?"

The girl balled her fists and made a sound like a piglet having its tail pulled, before yelling to one of the guys. "That's him, Jack!"

A thuggish looking guy, about twenty and wearing an ill-fitting leather jacket, strutted toward Kenny.

"Now…"

Was all he got to say… Kenny didn't have time for this, and didn't like fighting out of costume anyway, as it only resulted in more problems during the day. But the young vigilante could easily tell that even if he ended the ensuing fight, this problem most likely wouldn't disappear. Like that kid had told Mysterion. 'You push someone, they push back.'

As this Jack approached, Kenny did the same, taking a slow walk up to him. But before Jack could continue his posturing, or throw a punch, Kenny had sprung into action.

He jumped, twisting his body in a spin and performing a startlingly fast roundhouse kick. One which smashed into the side of Jack's unsuspecting jaw, sending the guy tumbling down to the ground where he rolled into the gutter.

Kenny was no martial artist, but he'd taken classes when he could. Not to mention sometimes life was the best teacher you could find, and Kenny McKormick had lived quite a life, or several depending on how you looked at his curse.

A cry of "Oh shit!" Went up somewhat collectively from the thugs, and several of them lunged forward.

They had little coordination, and hadn't had time to get around and entrap him. So as two men bumbled forwards, it was easy work for Kenny to sidestep them, cracking one in the side of the head with an elbow jab, while the other one tried to get around his friend to get at Kenny.

Kenny brought up his fists and smacked away a punch from the second man. He retaliated with a staggering kick to the thug's stomach, hooking his foot under the hoodlums sloppy block.

Given the amount of times Kenny had been stabbed, shot, impaled, burned… Okay, given the number of times Kenny had been attacked from behind by a hitherto forgotten opponent, he made sure to spin a quick kick to the head of Jack. Just as the guy was pulling himself to his feet. This blow sent him wheeling into the road this time, with an even clumsier looking trip and fall.

A third nameless thug charged in, this one significantly larger than his fellows. The proverbial brawn of these already bulky men.

One meathook of a fist came down on Kenny like a sledgehammer, striking him in the shoulder and driving him back quite a ways. The teen stumbled to the ground and had to speedily roll out of the way, as the big guys foot came in to stomp his face into the sidewalk.

Kenny scrabbled away, paying no heed to the sound pf Loretta jeering in the background. The mob princess no doubt egging her fathers cronies on to kill him, or something like that.

Kenny pulled himself up and away, using the bonnet of a parked car as leverage to heave himself to his feet. As his shoulder thrummed pain at him, Kenny decided to get a height advantage on this bigger opponent. He threw one foot up onto the bonnet of this very expensive looking sports car, and hopped up onto it. He came around in a spin on his heel and stood above his enemies, on the bright orange vehicle.

Kenny's speed and acrobatics took the thug by surprise, and a punch he had thrown while the lad was getting up, missed spectacularly. Next Kenny lashed out a leg and booted the man right in his face. The guy recoiled but did not go down, so Kenny quickly brought in another kick to the same area.

That was when the fourth man came in, swinging a baseball bat with reckless abandon. The wooden bat missed Kenny, but left a nasty dent in the hood of the car. Also causing the vehicle's shrill alarm to go off, the whining beeps echoing out in the evening street.

Kenny delivered a kick to the batsman, and then reached down to grab the bat for himself. Because in a fight against seven guys, he needed more advantage than just standing on a car. He wrenched the bat from the thugs hands, and stepped back to assess the fight once more.

One was out for the count, the guy he'd elbowed in the head must've hit something on his way down and been knocked out. Then there was the second guy who was winded and hugging his chest, not looking to be in any condition to fight where he stood off to the side. The third, largest thug had a bloody nose, but didn't seem out yet. That left three others, who were circling the car. And Jack, who was…

Kenny felt someone grab his ankles and yank, pulling his legs out from under him and causing him to smack down onto the cars hood. Pain reverberated throughout his whole body, but he'd been through far worse and could pass this off as a dull ache.

Jack brought several punches in, smacking Kenny twice in the face and bringing about a wave of dizzying pain. Though it was distant, Kenny could hear the girl squealing in delight. So, eager to disappoint her, Kenny hefted the baseball bat into a shorter grip, and jabbed the butt at Jack's face.

The painful 'thunk' sounds drew some agonised shouts from Jack, and Kenny no longer had fists landing on his face, or someone holding him down on the car. He rolled off, landing on the ground and dragging himself to his feet sluggishly.

Out of the corner of his bruised eye Kenny caught sight of another thug stepping up to the plate. So he brought the bat round in a wide arc, which connected satisfyingly with the mans head. There was no yelp, but the man fell to the ground and remained there, unmoving. Which Kenny took to be a good sign.

A brutal swing of the bat and Kenny felled another one of them. Leaving him with three; the big guy, a weedy fella he had't hit yet, and Jack.

Kenny swung the bat at the weedy guy, which was ducked nimbly and countered with a quick, almost tentative jab to his midriff. The teenage boy didn't have time to be sympathetic to his enemies, so he swung the bat again, catching the guy in his side and eliciting a scream from the poor man. Another swipe at his legs, and this one was down as well.

Then Kenny turned his attention back to the big guy, who was all of a sudden right on top on him. He smashed into Kenny, sending the bat clattering to the ground. With the car alarm wailing, the musclebound thug grabbed onto the badly beaten teen, and swung him into the side of the vehicle.

The window he'd been shoved against cracked under the force of this impact, and Kenny felt a wet sort of pain at the back of his head. While his vision blurred, Kenny felt a blow so heavy it might've been made of metal, slam right into his face. The window cracked further as his head was whacked against it once more, and Kenny had only enough wits about him to avoid the second punch when it came in.

This meant the big guys fist went through the car window, getting shredded by jagged, shattering glass as it passed through. These daggers of glass slashed along the thugs arm, producing from him a very high pitched screech.

Kenny extracted himself from the thugs loosened hold, and then grabbed the man's head. With all the strength he had, Kenny shoved the bald crooks cranium through the other window. The window on this side that had not been shattered yet… The result was very painful for the nameless brute… His head went straight through, more glass shattering around his skull as he was lodged into the vehicle. The sharp fragments broke away as the thug fell limp, not unconscious, but whimpering sadly as he quivered there.

Kenny drew back, his face bruised and bloody, his clothes the same.

He was about to turn his attention to Jack, when a gunshot cracked through the air.

Kenny didn't see who shot him, but whoever it had been had made sure they wouldn't miss, as the bullet penetrated his skull.

He fell to the concrete, losing consciousness almost immediately, and passing on from this world…

… After the thugs had picked themselves up and left, the door of a nearby house creaked open. While in other homes, the curtains were gently parted by the streets occupants…

A short, stocky man looked out of his front door, glancing about with a very frightened expression. Then he caught sight of the teenage boy, lying still on the sidewalk outside of his house, blood pooling around his head.

"… Oh my God…" He began quietly.

Then his eyes drifted to take in the smashed up sports car at the side of the road, and forgetting the dead boy, he suddenly shouted.

"What the hell happened to my car!?"

—?M?—


	3. We have an understanding

Try to remember.

Chapter 3: We have an understanding.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park, Young Justice or any of the works in/related to H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

—?M?—

Kenny's eyes snapped open and he was greeted by the sight of the roof over his head, in his dark bedroom at the Dupuis home in upper Gotham. Feeling sullenly pissed off, and very worn, the teenager sat up in bed. He was wearing that old familiar orange parka, the coat that seemed to be a part of him when resurrecting, or reanimating, or reawakening or whatever it was he did to come back.

Patting himself down, Kenny felt no lasting scars. Scarring didn't happen often and didn't last, but when a death was brutal enough, sometimes the wounds didn't fully heal. Assured that he was fully intact, Kenny shifted his gaze over to his alarm clock. 6:25PM. Twenty five minutes had passed, not that there was ever a standard amount of time, but it was still pertinent to note such things.

Hopping out of bed, Kenny mulled over how to go about letting his foster parents, and more importantly Karen, know he was home. As it wouldn't do to just, appear, so to speak. Then his blue eyes caught sight of the setting sun out his window, and he got his answer. Opening the window, Kenny elected the easiest option and clambered out into the cold evening chill. With ease he navigated down the wall, using the guttering and artfully decorative foliage to guide his descent.

In a minute he was over the garden wall and back round to the front of the house, pulling out his key and opening the front door.

"Young man, would you care to tell me what happened at school today." Inside he found the stoic Jonathan Dupuis waiting for him in the living room.

Kenny had to physically hold back a tired sigh, instead answering blankly. "Some older girl was bullying Karen. So I put a stop to it."

Then it was Mr. Dupuis turn to sigh tiredly, before taking of his glasses in a thoughtful manner and saying. "Kenneth, come and sit with me in the study."

Kenny quietly followed his foster father to the office-like, gothically decorated room, where he sat across the desk from Mr. Dupuis awaiting the lecture. "Kenneth, you badly injured a fifteen year old girl."

"It shouldn't happen again." Kenny offered.

Mr. Dupuis shook his head slowly, then said. "Now that's not good enough, Kenneth, I want a promise from you that it will never happen again."

Kenny met his foster father's eyes, and then resolved. "It won't happen again, so long as no one threatens or hurts Karen."

"No, now Kenneth, even then you should tell a teacher, not resort to mindless reactionary violence."

"Sorry, but that's not how it is." Kenny was now the one shaking his head in a thoughtful manner.

"What do you mean by that, Kenneth?" Mr Dupuis inquired, trying to be sympathetic.

"I mean bullies don't understand that kind of authority. Even if a teacher was watching over them all day, they'd still find a way to try and make someone feel smaller than them… So I show them a new authority. It works differently because these kids are rich, but the same thing is true in every school i've been in." Kenny finished his statement by simply looking at Jonathan and awaiting a response.

"Kenny, I understand you and Karen have been through a lot, but you can't just… You can't just attack people like that, and a young lady as well, it's just not proper behaviour for people of our standing." The stolid gentleman was approaching a point where he was raising his voice now.

"Someone of 'your' standing." Kenny shot back reflexively. Mr. Dupuis' eyes bulged in anger, but Kenny jumped in before he could start ranting. "Mr. Dupuis if you're saying people of 'our' standing; meaning you, your wife, Karen and myself, then I don't think you do understand… It's true that, given time, Karen might become someone of 'your' standing, but me…? I can't just sit by while someone picks on my sister. I've got to do what I know works, and that was to attack Loretta Inzerillo."

"… Can I at least have your word that if something like this might happen again, that you not resort so quickly to violence?" To Jonathan's credit he did appear to be understanding where Kenny was coming from.

"Alright." Was the blonde teen's answer. Because in a way the man was right, beating up the Inzerillo girl had not worked out well for him.

"Okay, I'm glad we have an understanding. You may go. But mind you watch your behaviour, Kenneth. Your second day at school, and already…" Was how their little talk finished, with Mr. Dupuis trailing off into disgruntled grumbling. So Kenny got up and left, heading for Karen's room to check up on her after the day's events.

Heading down the hall, Kenny gave a little knock on her door, before he heard her voice from inside say. "Come in."

Pushing the door open halfway, Kenny poked his head in to see his sister sitting cross legged on her bed, books spread out and open in front of her. "Hey, Karen. How are ya?"

She nodded simply, smiled at him and said."I'm good."

"You get home alright?" He inquired, hoping she hadn't encountered trouble anywhere near as bad as he had.

"Yeah. Barbara and Steph gave me a ride." Her smile sweetened and Kenny got the feeling that she was going to be alright at this new school. The incident with Loretta Inzerillo had not filled him with hope, but now, he could rest at least partly assured.

"Cool…" Seeing as she was busy, and he himself felt like he could sleep for a decade, Kenny ended by saying. "Okay, g'night Karen."

"Goodnight Kenny, thank you." She replied softly, before turning back to her books.

"No problem." Then he shut the door, and headed into his own room down the hall.

After he'd gotten into bed, deciding to skip patrol tonight on account of a death, Kenny turned his thoughts to the Inzerillo's. One of them had shot him. Which one? Was impossible to tell now, but Barbara Gordon mentioned Loretta being a mobsters daughter. Which would've made those thugs who took him on the henchmen of her father, most likely anyway.

He resolved to look into it further tomorrow, and not leave one of his murders unavenged. Therefore Kenny would investigate the Inzerillo's and whatever seedy business they particularly specialised in. Whether it was drugs, guns, human trafficking. Mysterion would drag it out into the light no matter what.

And on that thought, Kenny fell asleep.

—?M?—

 _He was deep, deep underwater. Beneath massive, swelling tides of filthy green, murky sewage water. He couldn't see any light filtering down from the surface, yet there was a permeating glow ahead of him, through the mist of the dirty lake._

 _He pushed himself onwards, not feeling the need to breathe, nor experiencing the heavy pressure that should've come with such depths._

 _As he approached the pool of light within the waters, he noticed it wasn't simply a spotlight shining down from on high. Instead, it was a sort of bioluminescent thing submerged with him._

 _A wide, off-white contour in a the hue of sickly skin, all beige and unhealthy looking. It wriggled, either with the tide or of its own accord, rippling in the waters relative stillness. It was quite large too, easily twenty feet long and a little over half that in width. An elongated oval shape it was._

 _As he floated in the water before it, he noticed something tingling along its surface. At regular intervals, little boils had begun to bulge up from beneath the odd thing's skin. Creating pointed bumps all across its back. It wriggled once more, this living sack of skin and pulsating boils._

 _As he stared at it, transfixed, the boils began to protrude even more, until they could no longer be called as such. Now they were long enough to be spines, stretching out of the body and arcing softly down its back, away from him. The spines were metallic looking, shining like steel even in these clouded subaquatic fathoms. And as they grew like little hairs down the contour of this beige mass, three tentacular spines at the front began to deviate from the pattern._

 _These three exceptions did not follow the path of the others, they instead reached out to him, weaving, tendril-like in his direction. Then they stopped, not that far from his face and about a foot out from the mass itself. After they had stopped extending. the tips of these antennae blinked open, revealing three orbs that were incredibly inhuman in all but shape, yet still nonetheless they were identifiable as eyes._

 _The stalks looked at him, staring directly into his own eyes, blinking several times as he stared back at them. These amber orbs, pinpointed with amorphous grey pupils, writhed in their slimy sockets, much like the skin all along the creature's back._

 _The eyes are the window to the soul, and what he saw in this alien beings' would've been impossible to correlate in the mind of a normal person. But he had been to far away places, witnessed things no one else was meant to. So he translated the emotion in those inconceivable spheres as old as the earth, and what he saw frightened him._

 _He saw apathy, and outside of that this things eyes were so alien in feeling, in perspective, that he could not bring himself to try and decipher anything further than that. Except maybe, a distant sense of desire. But desire for what, he could not tell._

 _After the two had locked gazes for a while, the mass of gelatinous creature shifted. It's front rising up before him to open a great, wide cavity._

 _Then as Kenny looked into it's black, toothless mouth, he felt something pulling him away. There was a sound, a distant shrillness, repeating over and over as the slug-like creature moved to swallow him whole…_

—?M?—

Just like the day before, and most mornings it seemed, Kenny woke with a jolt, springing out of his dream to find himself tangled in his bedsheets. In a cold sweat, he forced himself to sit up and grab hold of the waking world.

Trying to make sense of that dream, that… Whatever it was, posed a frightening possibility. Mysterion's past experience with the occult, especially his trip to a certain star-sunk cyclopean city, gave him an attuned sense for all things eldritch.

When he was ten, he and his friends were stranded in the extra-dimensional city known as R'lyeh. Though this was back during the Gulf crisis that never happened. Even so, ever since that brief sojourn he had dreamt inexplicable dreams, and what occurred in these visions never failed to show themselves in the sane world. Whether it was clairvoyance, or whether he was simply subconsciously aware of these presences, Kenny did not know. But what he did know, is that he didn't like the look of that monstrosity in his dream.

Pulling himself to his feet, he filed his thoughts away, intending to ponder on them throughout the day, or later on patrol. For now he had to busy himself with his everyday life…

—?M?—

Once again at lunchtime, when all the students had flooded out of their classes to embrace their break, Kenny set upon finding Loretta Inzerillo. Not only did the girl need to answer for what she had caused him, but she also needed to apologise to his sister. Something Kenny would make sure she did personally.

There was also the small detail that she had seen him die. In cases like these, Kenny never knew what people would remember exactly. How would his curse write his death out of their memories? Sometimes they would remember he ran away. Or they ran away. Someone took him away, he got separated, etc etc. Whatever it turned out to be though, never failed to seem like a poor excuse to his mind.

In no time at all he found the girl he was looking for. Her uniform was once more pristine, her face however was not. She still bore the same cast over her nose from where he had broken it, and she seemed to move her head with a little more care than one normally would.

"Inzerillo." He called out bluntly.

Whirling around she faced him, her eyes widening in anxiety and fear. When she spoke, her voice sounded incredibly nasal, as if she had a bad cold. "Oh! New guy… Hey… What do you want?"

"What do you think?" Asked Kenny rhetorically, furrowing his brow at her.

"…" Her eyes widened, her hand drifting up to cover her nose.

Kenny rolled his eyes and irritably clarified. "I want you to apologise to Karen, dumbass,"

"Oh. Right. Sure…" He hand fell back to her side where she fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, her fingers twitching in an idle, nervous fashion.

"Well…?" Kenny prompted her.

"I'll do it, alright!?" She yelped angrily, before pausing and then starting. "I just, wanna say sorry to you as well… After you kicked the crap out of my brother and his friends… I realised that I'd just been a real…"

"Piece of shit?" Kenny suggested, a lingering mote of annoyance carrying over from the fact that one of her brother's friends had shot and killed him.

"Hey! I'm trying to say sorry, okay?" The blonde teen shot back, stamping her foot in a petulant, indignant manner. Which did shut Kenny up.

"Well, I was just in a mood, and needed to take it out on someone, y'know?" Loretta explained, sighing dramatically. "My Papa's been… cranky, recently and I was just feeling down so… I'm sorry, it won't happen again." She abashedly looked down and away from him, but her eyes drifted slyly back to see if he accepted her apology.

Which he did, albeit a little reluctantly. "That's fine, but I don't need an apology. Karen does."

"Right. I'll go do that now then…" She said, turning away to head off and find Karen. Then she glanced over her shoulder, half to make sure he was following her and half to say. "But, we're cool, right?"

"As soon as you apologise to my sister? Yeah."

The mob princess nodded, then flicked her hair as she turned and trotted off. "Got it." She said, while Kenny followed after her.

It turned out Karen was sat eating lunch with the three from yesterday; Barbara, Steph and Dick. When they saw Loretta head over, their reactions were wary. Then they glimpsed Kenny sticking to her like a shadow, and relaxed.

With no prompting from the tall blonde boy, Loretta began, her hands clasped in front of her, standing primly. "Hi, Karen. Look, I want to say, sorry. To you. For how I acted yesterday. It was horrible of me. I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you, and you really didn't deserve that. So… I'm very sorry." Her apology stopped and started, a form of stage fright getting the better of her. But she got through it with sincerity.

In reply, Karen nodded demurely and said. "Okay, I guess I forgive you."

"You do?"

"Yeah." The mousy haired young teen affirmed, nodding her head and smiling. Before that smile turned into a smirk, and she gestured to her own nose. "Besides, I think you paid you dues enough already."

Loretta looked peeved, but received the good natured humour of the remark anyway. "Oh, yeah. I guess. Well, see you around."

After that, the apologetic teen walked off. Kenny gave Karen a thumbs up, before following after Loretta once more. He had a few more questions for that girl.

"Happy?" She snipped, upon realising he was still tailing her.

Despite her snappish attitude, Kenny could tell Loretta had meant what she said to Karen. "Very… Your nose okay?" He added.

"It's fine! Thank you." She stated indignantly.

"This sort of thing won't happen again?" Was his next question, the hint of a reprimanding tone evident in his voice.

Loretta turned to face him, looked up directly into his eyes and assured Kenny. "No…"

"Are you okay though…? You said your dad was 'cranky' which is why you were acting out… What's going on there?" His inquiry was made genuinely, with concern for the girl's well being. But that didn't mean he did not have an ulterior motive.

"He's not hitting me or anything, if that's what you're getting at. He's just had a lot of work lately, he isn't home a lot and when he is he gets short with everybody. Mom, Jack, me, the maids, our chef, the pool boy, the butler, the chauffeur." Kenny could not help but raise his eyebrows every time this girl listed off another notch of luxury like it was nothing. "His temper's shorter than usual…" Loretta finished morosely, and Kenny's eyebrows returned from where they'd been leaving earth's atmosphere.

"I'm sorry to hear that." He comforted, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it off and replied. "Nah, that's alright. I guess it's all part of his job."

"What's he do?" Was the clinching question for Kenny, but he asked it like anyone else would in conversation.

"He runs a big important shipping company down at the East Side Docks. Apparently he's had trouble with a big shipment, I dunno, he doesn't talk to me about it, thank God. Bore my ass off." Loretta finished with a light laugh, pushing her sunflower yellow curls behind her ears. She was about to carry on talking, when the school bell rang. "Oh, well you get the idea… I'll see you around then… um…?"

"Kenny." He supplied, before walking off to his class. Leaving her to head in the other direction.

—?M?—


	4. Night life

Try to remember.

Chapter 4: Night life.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park, Young Justice, or any works in/related to H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

—?M?—

In between getting out of detention and starting his patrol, Kenny did some internet detective work and managed to turn up all the information he needed to begin his investigation fully.

A quick friend request sent via social media to Loretta Inzerillo, followed by a bit of digging, granted Kenny the location of her family's home. A penthouse apartment overlooking Gotham's glitzy entertainment district. Sitting lofty on the top-floor, and seemingly easy to access from the adjacent buildings. All Kenny needed to do to accomplish that was bring his makeshift grappling hook.

Most of Mysterion's equipment was either home made, dubiously acquired, or just simple objects repurposed for vigilante uses. The grapple was one of those, but the list included firecrackers, a flashlight, a knife, lock-picks, a USB drive he used to assist any computer hacking he needed to do (courtesy of an old friend), and of course, his handgun.

There was no mystery-mobile, question-bike, or little question mark shaped boomerangs and explosives for him. He clearly wasn't as well funded as these other heroes. But that didn't matter, to his mind all you needed to be a vigilante was skill and determination. The former he had a great deal of, and his amount of the latter was astounding.

Further investigation on the web in general, gifted him with the addresses of several offices and docks that were owned or operated by "Inzerillo Shipping Incorporated" But seeing as there were several of those, Kenny elected to break into the Inzerillo home to search for clues there. If he could get his hands on any documents or crack open any computer files, he'd probably find something of use.

If what Loretta had let slip was true, and her father was conducting some big business as of late, then there would likely be something lying around which would point him in the right direction.

Finding anything incriminating also depended on whether there was actually anything to find. Although that tip he'd gotten from Barbara Gordon certainly pointed towards it. And considering who the redhead's father was, Kenny could probably rely on that.

Later that night, when Karen and the Dupuis' had long since gone to bed, Kenny pulled on his costume and slipped out into the cold Gotham night.

The midnight air was cold and still, though as Mysterion left the wealthy residences and moved into the dense inner city, the atmosphere changed. The quiet night grew louder, the cars on the main streets still rushing to and fro. The smells shifted as well, from mostly fresh air to a heavier, polluted musk.

He began to ascend to higher and higher heights as well, leaving the roofs of those detached two-story houses behind, and climbing to the tops of skyscrapers. Flowing through the shadows of the city, vaulting ledges, flitting from perch to perch, crossing perilous gaps and canyon-like drops. This was familiar territory; the elegant and efficient traversal of a city by foot. Something Mysterion was very adept at.

When he reached the neon lights of the entertainment district, he took a moment to orient himself and locate his destination. After several minutes of adapting, the phantasm of a teenager placed himself on a fire escape of building across from his target.

With his shrewd eyes, Mysterion examined the penthouse, where it sat high above the other buildings in the area. Then he withdrew his grapple and after aiming for a moment, he began to spin the hook in his hand. Whirling it around in a circle, loosely holding onto the loop of cord in the other hand. After building up enough momentum in the spin, Mysterion launched the hook out and up with a powerful throw.

It flew skywards across the gap, reaching the pinnacle of its arc and slowing down. For a second Mysterion thought it might not reach the balcony, but it managed to stretch just far enough to land over the stone ledge.

Giving a heavy tug, Mysterion tested the line. It pulled taught, and after a few more yanks he was confident it would not budge. Though Mysterion grimaced as he remembered how he'd been painfully wrong before. Regardless, taking a step up onto the edge of the fire escape on which he nested, the teenage vigilante took a calming breath, and dropped off of the side.

Falling fast with the wind billowing his cape behind him, Mysterion swung across the street. His cord held, and after a short journey suspended far above the street, he hit a wall, hard… The contact would've cowed a normal kid, maybe broken some bones, but to Mysterion it was little more than a bump. Steadying himself against the brick of the building, he planted his feet on the side of the building and began to walk himself up the side. Slowly, Mysterion progressed up the surface, making sure to avoid the windows with lights on and so forth.

After a strenuous climb, Mysterion reached the top where he could haul himself over the edge and onto the Inzerillo's penthouse balcony. Not before peeking over the ledge first to check for guards though.

He saw nothing but a large open space, adorned with potted plants and large enough to contain a small swimming pool. On the opposite side from him were some french windows, and a wall of glass that looked in on what must be the family's lounge. It was all dark thankfully, with the only light being that which shone down from the moon, or carried over from other high rise buildings nearby.

He pulled himself over the ledge without fuss, and began to draw his grappling rope up from where it hung down the side. After recoiling the hook's cord, Mysterion stood up and quietly moved around the edge of balcony to the doors which led inside. When at them, he debated trying his luck with the handle. He wasn't expecting them to be unlocked, but they could very well be alarmed.

Taking a gamble, Mysterion twisted the door handle and unsurprisingly found it to be locked. But by a stroke of luck, alarms didn't start blaring. At least not any audible ones. At this, Mysterion withdrew from his belt a small set of lock picks and set to work.

Crouching at the door, occasionally glancing around in case he would be interrupted, the shadowy vigilante worked at cracking open the doors. Mysterion had been doing this since before he donned the cape and hood, so it was less than a minute later that the door clicked open.

He slowly made his way inside, sticking to the edge of the open room and keeping to only the deepest shadows. Shallow silhouettes were the only things that hinted at his presence, tracing across the patches of light whenever Mysterion had to pass by a window.

In the utter silence of this sleeping household, Mysterion moved out of the large living room, and into the bowels of the home. He entered first into a long dark hallway, pictures and portraits lined the walls, and vases of flamboyant flowers stood on little tables at various intervals.

The corridor gave off a feeling of homely warmth, even in the dead of night, and as Mysterion crept down the hall he stopped at one of it's many doors. Now he needed to find where Loretta's father, Enrico Inzerillo, kept his work documents. An office would be the most likely place. But in his search for that one room, he needed to be careful not to disturb the sleeping residents of the house's other rooms.

As he gently pressed his ear to the door, Mysterion's mouth fell open a little, his eyes widening as he realised the house may not be entirely asleep. A series of quiet moans came from behind the door, with the occasionally muffled word being groaned out.

Not wanting to disturb what was probably Mr. and Mrs. Inzerillo, Mysterion schooled his expression back from the mild surprise, and continued to the next door.

This door warranted no investigation, as it bore a pretty little plaque that read in flowery handwriting, 'Loretta's room'. The next door down was one Mysterion had to open, as no sound came from within and nothing indicated where it led. Peeking through the crack, his keen eyes picked out a bedroom. Clothes strewn on the floor and a heavily breathing lump lying under the bedsheets. So Mysterion closed the door again, and moved on to the next room.

This one was locked, so with some quick lock pick work he granted himself access. Pushing it open a crack he looked inside, and found this room to be the one he was looking for.

A desk with a computer on it occupied one end of the room, and a series of filing cabinets lined the left hand wall. Asides from this it was fairly featureless, with only one, large window behind the desk.

Breaking out his flashlight, Mysterion got to work. He had an excellent eye in the dark, but he'd reached his visions limits here, even with moonlight flowing through the window. Slowly and silently he began leafing through the cabinets, but after about the third impenetrably written shipping report, Mysterion moved over to the desktop computer.

Taking out a small USB drive, Mysterion pushed the hacking gadget into a port, and set to breaking into the data on the machine. Getting by the password was easy, and navigating the information held on it was just as simple.

Within minutes he'd found what he needed, dates for several incoming shipments throughout the week. None of the emails said what exactly was being shipped, but he'd known Inzerillo liked to keep things above board. Which was okay; he had times, dates and locations.

One place mentioned more frequently was pier fifteen over on the East Side, which was where an inordinate amount of whatever it was, was being transported to. When it reached there it seemed like the shipment was sent somewhere else, but again it never said where.

Feeling he had enough, Mysterion withdrew the USB stick, stowed it away and shut down the desktop. Smirking at a job well done, the mysterious teenager went to leave the room, flicking off his flashlight and reattaching it to his belt.

Quickly retracing his path, Mysterion reached the balcony and withdrew his grapple once more. Throwing the grapple down made it almost impossible for the hook to gain purchase on something, but the building he'd used to get across was the closest in height to the penthouse, and provided the best chance.

This worked to his success, as Mysterion managed to re-cross the urban chasm with ease. Leaving almost no sign that he had ever been there, and taking with him only information.

—?M?—

The next few nights he spent staking out a warehouse in the East Side docks. Pier 15, the place where a large shipment of something was supposedly coming in.

He'd familiarised himself with the warehouse itself and the blocks around it, preparing himself for when the shipment would arrive. Then he would most likely just pacify them using his favoured tactics. Taking down the majority of them using stealth, and dealing with the rest in a good old fashioned beat down.

Mysterion wasn't afraid to use firearms either, even if the handgun at his side was mostly a last resort for himself. The ultimate escape, suicide. Except for Kenny it wasn't the final resort. He would come back from it a short time later, evading death and getting out of impossible situations in the process. Leaving no one the wiser.

Soon enough the night of the shipment arrived, and it started with a contingent of armed guards setting up around the warehouse.

Secluded in the rafters of the metal roofed building, Mysterion watched as they arranged themselves. Four sentries in total, positioned on catwalks that ran around the edge of the relatively sparse warehouse. Then there were three armed men on the ground, all escorting the man Mysterion recognised as Enrico Inzerillo.

They waited around for a while, until a boat arrived at the dock outside. Mysterious shifted his position to see as the shipment was unloaded. It included numerous, differently sized and unmarked wooden crates, along with two large metal shipping containers of the kind you would see being transported via freight train.

When everything was delivered, Mysterion expected the deal to go down. But still nothing happened. The men waited around, Enrico standing there in his pristine suit, kicking his feet and looking anxious.

After a while the main doors to the building opened, and a new group entered. Looking vastly different from Inzerillo and his men, seeing as they were wearing druidic robes of teal and beige. These robes obscured their whole bodies, covered their hands completely, and enshrouded their faces in shadow.

Mysterion's face twisted in displeasure when he saw them. He did not recognise them specifically, or their regalia, but Kenny knew enough to identify them as cultists of some sort.

Inzerillo stood up straighter at the arrival of the three, and immediately greeted them. "Good evening, sirs. How are you on this fine, fine evening?"

Clearly nervous, Enrico bounced slightly on his feet, the pudgy little man still not feeling confident, even though he had two men armed with assault rifles by his side. With other armed guards stationed around the place.

Mysterion had figured this night would be a regular drug bust, or something similar like an arms deal that he'd have to put a stop to. But the arrival of heavily robed people, whom Inzerillo seemed to fear with some magnitude, changed things. Now he needed to find out who these three people were, and what exactly was in those containers.

At Inzerillo's greeting, the three robed figures stared silently back at him, unnaturally still. After an awkward silence, the nervous Inzerillo suggested. "Perhaps you'd like to look through today's shipment now? Pick out any that catch your eye?"

After another uncomfortable silence, Enrico gestured to his henchmen, who began to open the first shipping container. Bringing their guns to bear, one of them shouted something in a foreign language. At his shout, a crowd of beleaguered, malnourished people began to shamble out of the metal box.

The armed guards barked a few orders and the people were formed into a row. Each one of them silent and defeated.

The robed three then began to slowly make their way along the line, occasionally pausing and examining one of the captives. While moving along and inspecting the people like they were some kind of animal, the robed figures took several out of the line. Then when they'd finished perusing the three simply looked at each other, and without words seemed to agree on something. Finally turning to Inzerillo, who had been fidgeting in barely constrained fear, and nodding once at him.

"Okay!" The short mobster exclaimed, relieved. Gesturing once more to his guards, he continued. "Boys why don't you, get the rest of them back in the container, and help our three, friends, get their chosen few into… whatever it is they're transporting them with!"

As the robed three led their chosen captives out a side door, flanked by three of Inzerillo's men, Mysterion had to make a choice. Either remain here and put a stop to this deal, apprehending Inzerillo in the process. Or tail the robed buyers.

As much as it pained him to leave these poor people to their fate, he went with the latter. The appearance of cultists did not signal anything good, and considering his dream a few nights ago Mysterion would be hard pressed to ignore this chance.

But as the doors to the shipping container closed, sealing the remaining captives inside, and as the side door opened for the buyers to leave… All the lights went out.

—?M?—


	5. Beneath Gotham

Try to remember

Chapter 5: Beneath Gotham.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park, Young Justice, or any works in/related to H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

Mild warning: We're starting to really earn that M rating people.

—?M?—

With the lights cut, Mysterion needed to move fast if he wanted any hope of keeping track of the robed buyers. Scurrying across the metal rafter beams, he made his way down to one of the catwalks and then slipped, unnoticed, out of a nearby window.

Once outside, he found himself on a sloped, corrugated iron roof. As he slid himself down to the edge, Mysterion could hear spasmodic bursts of gunfire from back inside the warehouse, as well as several shouts of fear and pain. Ignoring these, the hooded vigilante fixed his eyes on the buyer's getaway vehicle; an unremarkable white van, which the chosen captives were now hurriedly being piled into.

With the captives squirrelled away, the buyers swiftly got into their vehicle. As Mysterion heard the engine start up, he darted across the roof, sprinting into a leap out over the parking yard, aiming to land on the van's roof. He made the jump, and landed with a 'clunk' as the van revved into action, taking off out of the yard just as another bout of gunfire erupted from the warehouse.

The stern faced hero hunkered down on the van, keeping his centre of gravity as low as he could, so as to not to be sent tumbling off as the vehicle sped away.

Where he was and as focused as he was, Mysterion didn't notice when a small, black projectile flew out of the night and hit the van's rear bumper. The device adhered to the metal and clung on, becoming another unknown passenger on board.

Every street seemed to take the van into darker and darker parts of Gotham, until one last turn took them into an impenetrably dark, dead end alleyway. The headlights on the van remained switched off, and the vehicle came to a stop… A second passed with nothing but the engine purring, before there was the sound of shifting stone and sliding bricks, and a dimly lit opening grew out of nowhere in the wall which had until just now impeded their progress.

The unmarked vehicle continued on into the revealed tunnel, and as it passed into the confined space, Mysterion was forced to change position. He grabbed onto the edge of the van, above the rear doors, and dangled off the edge as the stony ceiling passed over them.

From there the path carried them down below the city, further down than the subway, further even than most of the sewers. It continued on for a while, and as Mysterion was beginning to finally notice the pain his prolonged awkward position was bringing, the truck slowed to a halt.

Hearing the drivers-side door open, Mysterion dropped to the floor and slipped under the van to hide himself, what with there no longer being space on the roof.

Bare feet padded around, and Mysterion could see the robes of the figure dusting across the floor, as they walked round to open the rear doors. The figure reached the doors and threw them open. No words were spoken, but the sniffling captives stepped down from their holding area and stood around nervously.

When the robed individual moved off again, returning to the front of the truck. The captives followed dutifully, and they all headed out of the passageway through a heavy stone door. The other two buyers went as well, and soon Mysterion was left alone, lying on the damp floor beneath the transit.

Rolling out from the small space, Mysterion got to his feet and hurried around to the front of the van. Opening the door he took a quick look inside for anything useful that might've been left behind. He found nothing major, but one thing tweaked his curiosity and worry. The steering wheel visibly glistened with some sort of substance. It was mustard yellow, and clung to the wheel where the driver must've been gripping it.

Mysterion grimaced at the sight of the foreign ooze. Whatever it was and whatever it's source, it did not bode well. His mind was already racing through potential suspects, even from just seeing the colour of their robes. But there was no cult he could remember whose robes would be teal and beige… The cultists all covering robes, and now the presence of this substance only made him worry more.

Hesitating no further, Mysterion swept around to the stone door, slowly pushing it open and hoping the cultists and their captives had moved on.

The room beyond was something of an underground planetarium, with a domed roof, and depressed floor, resulting in the whole of the space being roughly spherical. It was modestly lit by flickering fires held in brackets set upon the wall at regular intervals. Then at the lowest point of the room, directly in the centre, was a large pool of grey water. Completely opaque, with thick algae resting on it's still surface. Measuring at about ten feet in circumference, the whole of the pool was surrounded by engraved runes that had been chiseled into the stone floor.

On the opposite side of the room was a small raised area, flat, unlike the rest of the room. On this small platform was another door, which explained where the cultists and their captives had gone.

Taking advantage of the emptiness of the room, while still worrying about it's lack of hiding places, Mysterion moved down by the edge of the filthy pond. Stopping at the side, he didn't go near the water, instead gazing intently at the runes and sigils engraved on the floor surrounding it, committing to memory the strange shapes, only a few of which he vaguely recognised.

Not wanting to risk any tampering, since meddling with rituals in any way could have unforeseen consequences, Mysterion moved on to the only other door in the space.

He had reached the door, when a voice from behind stopped him dead in his tracks. An inhuman voice that gargled and burbled it's words, if you can call the sounds it made words.

"Ya, Gla'aki, fhtagn ng-lw'nafh. Grah'n hupadagh R'lyeh, kadishtu Gla'aki lw'nafh."

It was quiet, yet in the utter silence of the subterranean space it could be heard very clearly.

"llll sha ftaathun ut ghha'a xuia'ft ah

llll ftats aftu'a sha shugg.

sa'agat hrii anatt ftaftugh xuia' raas

lughst ghuftft thuna ng-anft'atha garaas."

Kenny turned to face the speaker, but was presented with nothing other than the empty spherical room. The only clue being given that someone or something was making these sounds, was the opaque surface of the grey water rippling subtly.

"Sghu, ftx sghu, ftx sghu, ftx sghu,

sha una ghhu ratf afuna ut xuia."

To almost any ear on earth, human or otherwise, it would've sounded complete gibberish. However, this was a language that Mysterion found eerily familiar. It's guttural nonsense stirring up a churning feeling inside his stomach, the otherworldly syllables, almost palpable in the air.

"Ch'tiankan tsa't ng-anthuans 'aiaftst,

shas ghuftft 'anu'a xuia' ftaghu ehye."

Mysterion picked up on an inconsistent rhythm to the words, though no sane, earthly poet could produce something so utterly odd as the metre of this babble. Yet it vomited forth from the previously still pond, and grew ever louder.

"Uias ur wahl ng-uias ur suna,

ut ghha'a xuia'ft fta tans ghhan lftanast aftugn.

sha ftia'ka' llll sha gasa ha taat,

xuia' lats, xuia' l'atans, ng-syha'h."

As the pool began to bubble more fiercely, almost boiling from some unseen heat, Mysterion's anxiety was building. The speech coming from beneath the waters was now so loud as to most certainly draw attention.

"Su ah untha nu'a un shas thutnuth thu'a"

As if cued by his thoughts, the door he had been about to breach, flew open with a crash. Into the room streamed the three robed cultists, who stopped short when seeing Mysterion stood but a metre before them, and almost fell to their knees upon turning their gazes to the boiling water.

"xuia'ft n'gha n'gha n'gha tna nu'a!"

The caterwauling had by now grown to a crescendo, though any meaning the words might've been trying to impart was lost on Kenny's ears, despite how familiar the language seemed.

"Grah'gof'n ghun's naas hut ang!"

Then, adding to the pot of mayhem that was about to overflow, the other entrance to the room exploded inwards, bringing with it a cloud of dust and smoke. Through which stepped a dark, imposing figure.

"Ftias ru'a suna ha'ftft ftua aftft hut uh'e!"

The three parties looked between each other. Three cultists, enrobed utterly, their expressions and body language unreadable.

The Batman himself, equally as unreadable as the robed three, though infinitely more menacing, given that he was not trembling in the wake of the phrases that had come out of the water.

Then caught between them was Mysterion, crouched low and ready for action. But behind his stern facade was a bristling sense of panic and worry. He was sorely outnumbered on one side, and though he hoped he and the Bat would not come to blows, he was soundly outmatched on the other.

"Ya, Gla'aki, fhtagn ng-lw'nafh. Grah'n hupadagh R'lyeh, kadishtu Gla'aki lw'nafh…"

With the quiet that followed, to call the atmosphere electric would've been an injustice. It was the calm before a storm, and as the waters settled back down, it was only a matter of moments before someone made the first move.

With a cry, one of the cultists rushed forwards, anger coming from him in a sound not dissimilar to that of an screaming child. It's target was Mysterion, and although he was ready for the attack, the young vigilante was not ready for the power that came with this wild bullrush.

He narrowly ducked to the side as the flailing arms came down on him, but even though he subsequently sank a heavy right hook into the cultists abdomen, he was met with little to no reaction.

With another yell, the cultist moved faster than Mysterion had expected, clumsily latching onto his upper arm and bringing him around with considerable might. What ensued was Mysterion being lifted clean off the ground as easily as if he were a feather, and held before the cultist. Where he was suspended, Kenny should've been able to see his attackers face, but even this close the hood his opponent wore still hid their visage in a most definitely mystic darkness.

"Hlirgh!" Was what the attacker screamed in his face, as they swiftly drew something from within their robes. Before he could react, Mysterion saw metal glint in the torchlight, and then felt pain blossom around his stomach region.

Unable to contain the bark of pain or the expletive that slipped from his mouth, Mysterion cried out in anguished rage. "Motherfucker!" Looking down he saw a ornamentally hilted dagger sticking out of him, with blood accompanying it as the red liquid eked out of the wound, soaking his costume.

The cultist withdrew their hand, and held his body up, facing towards the pool. But the mistake was already made; the robed assailant had left the dagger in him, which Mysterion quickly removed with only a light flinch, overcoming the initial spark of agony with ease.

"Ya uln Gla'aki-" The cultist's rapturous chant was cut off, as Mysterion drove the ritual knife into the arm holding him. Stabbing it through the wrist and twisting as he did so, Mysterion was rewarded with the cultist letting out a hiss of pain, before throwing him like a rag doll across the room.

Landing with an ungraceful thud, Mysterion rolled with his momentum and brought himself back to his feet. Casting a quick glance around him, he spotted Batman combating the other two robed figures at once. Even though the Dark Knight conducted himself with more precision and skill than Mysterion, he didn't seem to be having any more luck than the younger crusader.

Turning his attention back to his own foe, Mysterion saw them unsheathe the bloody blade from their wrist, and charge back at him, knife raised.

There was a short distance between them, so Mysterion had ample time to perform one practiced movement. He slipped the chain of firecrackers from his belt in one hand, grabbing his lighter with the other. Flicking the lighter, he brought flame and firework together, proceeding to throw them at his adversary's hidden face.

The fuse that he had already shortened, ignited quickly, the timing of the detonation coinciding perfectly with the proximity to their target's head. Then they did what firecrackers do; exploded in bright light, smoke and noise, snapping and cracking about the cultists head and sending them reeling backwards.

Mysterion turned the fight to his advantage then, sweeping in and past his enemy, grabbing hold of and pulling down their hood as he placed himself behind them.

What he saw beneath the shroud was a bald, scabbed cranium, coloured a mouldy yellow and glistening with a slimy mucus. With this action, the humanoid thing turned it's head to face him, and what greeted Mysterion was a portrait of hideously shrunken features. Shrivelled beady eyes sat in sunken sockets, with no visible nose and only a misshapen, yawning mouth gaping at him.

In his horrified surprise, Mysterion lost his train of thought, which in the middle of a fight, was a very bad thing indeed. The ghoulish creature had dropped the knife, but grappled onto him with both of its slick hands. Then it proceeded to drag him towards the pool at the rooms centre.

He was now struggling to get out of the humanoids grasp, smashing his fists against it's slimy skin, when his hand caught hold of something odd beneath it's robes. What felt like a metal peg was sticking out of it's lower back by about an inch, and as Mysterion tugged it in the melee, whatever it was came loose.

The peg gave a little, pulling further out of the corpse-like creature's body. With this, the monster seethed in pain and let go of the young vigilante. Not letting the opportunity slip, Kenny immediately pressed his advantage, twisting around and sprinting at the retreating creature.

Though it tried to shrink away from him, covering up the bolt in it's side, Mysterion would not let it recover. He regained his composure and slid a kick to it's shin whilst planting a fist in it's gut, knocking the creature off balance. Then as it flailed for control, he weaved in and grabbed hold of the metallic peg with both hands and yanked.

A good section of the robe tore apart, and the barb came away with some resistance. The patch of clothing that had been torn off revealed the monstrosity's disgusting body, also allowing Kenny to see what it was he had removed.

The barb had taken with it a great deal more than one would guess, the end of this silvery looking peg spreading out into gnarled red roots, that pulsated and twitched in a way that made Kenny's nerves shiver. It had not completely separated from the ghoulish torso however, as stringy tendons and wet vein-like strands still anchored themselves somewhere within the once-humans blackened insides.

With the barb dislodged, what was visible of the body started to sizzle and smoke, letting out a smell like rotting fruit. Then with a shriek and a whine, the walking corpse collapsed, crumpling to the floor like a sack of mud, falling silent and limp.

"A barb, look for a barb!" He yelled across to Batman, who was trying all he could to subdue two of these inhumanly strong creatures. But whatever the Bat tried seemed to have no effect. During his own tussle, Mysterion had seen the Dark Knight fire an electrified cable at one of them. But the ensuing voltage had no visible effect. Neither did the ties the Bat was currently using to try and bind them; cords that were pulled apart with relative ease.

Batman gave no indication that he had heard the junior crusader, but that had no effect on Mysterion's decision to run around the pool and assist. Discarding the still twitching root as he ran, Mysterion came up behind one of the distracted assailants.

Grasping at their torso, Mysterion searched for a similar metallic protrusion. As the cultist's attention began to turn to the teenage vigilante who was, to all appearances, briskly feeling them up, Kenny found what he was looking for.

Pressing a foot against this creature's spine for extra leverage, he pulled. The root came loose easily, tearing out the back of the robe and sending gore and filth flying free from the humanoid's gaping wound. The veiny roots twisted in the air, as the body itself spasmed and dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

For all his demeanour and presence, the Dark Knight seemed to be at a loss for a moment, though he didn't necessarily show it in an ordinary way. Standing there, wrestling with the one remaining cultist, the white slits of his cowl narrowed and directed towards the fallen cultists, and the teenager who had put them down.

With Batman's attention focused elsewhere, the remaining cultist took the initiative, delivering a forceful kick to the Dark Knights midriff. The energy behind the blow lifted the caped crusader up off of the ground and sent him flying a few metres back. Then it lunged at Mysterion, dutifully attacking the vigilante who had found their apparently lethal weakness.

Feeling the cramp from his stab wound, and not trusting himself to be able to overcome this ghouls inhuman strength with his hand to hand skills alone, Mysterion went for one of his last resorts.

As such, Batman was given a perfect view of Mysterion drawing a gun from his belt, cleanly taking aim in a New York minute, and firing a single, killing shot.

As the gunshot sang out, the Dark Knight could only raise a hand and move to shout out to the younger crime fighter in hopes of causing him to think twice. But the teenager's arm had rocked back with the recoil before Batman could even speak. And the bullet disappeared into the cultists shrouded hood before he could move, so there was nothing he could do to stop the teenage vigilante gunning down his opponent.

The result was not quite what Batman expected. Instead of falling to the ground a dead man, the cultist merely shuddered back violently, taking the power of the gunshot to its skull with immense resilience, but remaining very much alive despite the lethal hit. Then Gotham's defender took note of the other two fallen cult members, their smoking wounds, mutated faces, and the red roots that lay near their bodies.

Mysterion sprang into action once more, drawing on the opening his shot had given him. He smashed into the last remaining cultist, quickly seizing hold of the barb that stuck out of their back and withdrawing it.

The same sickly separation occurred, and the twisted human fell to the floor, a cavernous hole now opened where their spine should've been.

Tossing the malign root to the side, Mysterion spat out a thick globule of blood onto the ground. What followed was a very muted stillness, with the only audible noises being Mysterion's heavy breathing, and a low sizzling sound being emitted from the three abnormal corpses.

Mysterion turned to regard the Dark Knight, only to find the towering and terrifying figure of The Batman, looming over him.

He kept a stern look on his face as he stared up at the almost mythical hero, but inside his head two words ran on repeat.

 _'_ _Oh shit.'_

—?M?—

A/N: I am an awful person, for reasons many and varied, but number one and two on the list right now are… 1) This chapter's ending. I just had to cut it off there though, because as long as it's taken me to finally buckle down and find time to finish this chapter, it's been taking me even longer to figure out, just what the fuck these two are gonna say to each other! But good news is I've got a lot of ideas for that written down already so next chapter shouldn't take too long.

And 2) Well I touched on it there, it's taken a while to get this chapter out. I said to myself when I started this story, I said "I'm not gonna lose track of my updates this time. I will update it as much as I can." And I tried, I did, but a lot of stuff got in the way.

Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough, all that remains is to say, thanks for reading, hope you liked it, and thanks to the people who've followed, favourited and reviewed so far! You guys are great!


	6. Cooperation

Try to remember

Chapter 6: Cooperation

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or Young Justice.

—?M?—

"Who are you."

"My name is Mysterion."

"What are you doing in my city."

"It's no longer just your city, Batman. But I only concern myself with dealings of the occult. so you don't have to worry about me stepping on your toes."

"And why are you _here_."

If anyone else had been watching the exchange, they would've been bowled over by how similar the two were. In tone of voice and pattern of speech they were almost identical, in posture and overall demeanour the two gave of a sense of dark and elusive danger. They were two creatures of the night, the only noticeable differences between them being that Mysterion was shorter, ragged, and even with most of his face obscured by mask and hood, looked angrier. Whereas Batman was taller, black as the night itself, and exuded almost no emotion, unless you counted intimidation. They were the same sides of a slightly different coin.

"… Why are _you…?_ " Mysterion replied testily. The white slits in the Bat's cowl narrowed with his eyes, and Mysterion felt compelled to answer more cooperatively. After all, withholding information wouldn't make this an easy operation. "I was made aware of a cult operating somewhere in the city, and I intended to dismantle them myself. But nevertheless, I appreciate the help."

"How long have you fought crime."

"Long enough." Ruffled at being doubted, Mysterion shot back a low comment. "Rest assured Batman, I don't need you here."

"That stab wound says otherwise." Flicking his eyes towards the bloody wound in Mysterion's chest, Batman was not expecting the answer he received.

"That's of no concern to me." Ignoring the Bat's comment, Mysterion stooped down and gently picked up one of the roots that had been sustaining these creatures. Mysterion looked between the root and its prior host body, and saw that the ghoulish corpse was decaying at a faster and faster rate. When the two abnormal entities first detached, the cadavers had hissed and crackled like an autumn bonfire, but now their sickly yellow skin was blackened, charred, and just seemed to be melting away into nothing. "Or you for the matter." He continued off handedly before turning the conversation to more pressing matters. "But this is."

Turning the corpse over to inspect it further, Mysterion could practically feel the Dark Knight's glare burning into the back of his hood, but he had faced death so frequently he'd stopped counting, so turning and meeting that glare with one of his own was a simple task. "Now are you gonna continue to bitch and whine, or are we going to free those captives."

If it was even possible, Batman's baleful stare intensified. They remained, locked in a fierce, unspoken argument for a moment, until the Bat grunted and brusquely brushed by him, heading for the door. "You follow my lead, do exactly as I say, and don't, under any circumstances, use _this_."

With that, the older vigilante held up something which alarmed Mysterion somewhat. It was his gun. Darting a hand to his belt, Kenny indeed felt empty space where the piece should've been. In lieu of this, his brow furrowed beneath his hood and half mask. _'Sneaky bastard.'_ He considered voicing the thought, but settled instead for walking up beside the Bat and taking back his gun. Then to establish some sort of understanding between them, he flicked the safety on, stowed it in his belt and stated. "Deal."

The Dark Knight shot him yet another glare, but they both moved on towards the door which led deeper into this dungeon. Before proceeding through it, Batman produced some sort of device from within his utility belt, and pressed it to the tiny gap between door and floor.

After a moment, the Bat stood back up and opened the door quite ordinarily, and upon moving through, Mysterion could see why. They had stepped into a short corridor, completely rectangular, and with no other visible exits. It was a dead end.

Once again Batman led the way forward, his eyes scanning around the small space with increasing intensity… Mysterion wasn't just waiting patiently though, and while Batman pressed his ear to the opposite wall where an exit would usually be, Mysterion himself began to listen very carefully as well. But not for anything an ordinary ear could pick up on.

One thing he knew about the myriad of interconnected cults he had encountered over the years, from the Cthulhu Cult, to the Church of Starry Wisdom, and even the Esoteric Order of Dagon, was that they liked staying hidden. Thousands of years of secrecy had made their societies masters of the craft, and if a cult was being led by a clever individual, or god forbid one with an actual connection to one of the Outer beings, then their methods of keeping secrets knew almost no bounds.

So Mysterion listened for that sensation that wasn't quite a sound, more like a tugging in his head, calling him onward. A sixth sense he had for the outer-normal, the same one that plagued him with nightmares and keyed him in to the world's weirder wavelengths.

The Call led him to the crook where walls met, the corner of the dead end he and the Bat were investigating. As Mysterion touched the inner angle he found their hidden way. His fingers curled into the stone as if it wasn't even there, slipping around some invisible corner. To the naked eye it would seem as if his hands half vanished, but to Mysterion's thusly attuned senses he could see what was really happening.

It was a different thing entirely if you knew what was there, and it was easier to find if you knew what to search for. But to anyone else, no matter how much technology, magic, skill or luck they had, it would've been next to impossible to find. In short, now he knew it was there, Kenny could see it.

An impossible contortion of space, a whole corridor hidden within the tiny crook where the two walls formed a corner. Within the inner angle was where the corridor lay, and Kenny could see it. Space twisting to try and accommodate it, but never quite managing… It was dizzying to look at, so instead Kenny turned back to Batman, who was now looking at him with an air of intimidating evaluation. Though with Batman, practically everything he did was with a certain amount of intimidation.

Trying to think of the best way to explain the nigh unexplainable, Kenny soon gave up and simply told him. "Just close your eyes, walk into the corner and try to keep your balance." Before the older vigilante could respond, Mysterion had turned and stepped into the corner.

For him there was no sensation as he walked through the unnatural aperture, but as Mysterion emerged into a practically identical passage, he heard the Batman stumble out behind him, immediately pressing one hand to the wall to steady himself before straightening up. "Didn't close your eyes?" The teenager asked.

The growling reply was neither expected, nor unexpected. "When we have secured the hostages, you will debrief me on this cult, do I make myself clear?"

"Don't be so upset." Mysterion scoffed mildly. "It could've been worse."

"Elaborate."

At the prompting, some rather vivid past experiences with such paradoxical dimensions came to his mind. "We're still on Earth… in our dimension… and we've got all of our limbs. Believe me, it could've been worse." He finished with a frown.

A look which Batman matched as he moved on towards the door that would no doubt lead them ever deeper into the complex.

After Batman had checked under the door with that black device of his (which Kenny assumed to be a camera), the Dark Knight stood and told him evenly. "The room ahead contains four of the robed creatures. Three of them are standing at the edge of a sunken pool of water, I will move forward and deal with them. You will move round the right hand wall to where the hostages are being held in cells. You will subdue the guard there and then assist me if necessary. Understood?"

Mysterion nodded once, and without further ado Batman threw open the door, surging into the room beyond before Kenny could even lift a foot off the ground. This man was dangerous. But so was he, if not as on point.

So Mysterion swept around the doorframe and entered the fray. As Batman had described, along the right hand wall of this long, dimly lit, low ceilinged room, were several cells. The small chambers held a number of people, all of whom were lying still, hopefully unconscious.

Smoke billowed up out of seemingly nowhere in the middle of the room where Batman was fighting. But Mysterion's eyes remained firmly on his target. A short, robed figure who had been standing stoically by the cells. It's hood was down, revealing a similarly hideous visage to the three cultists he and the Bat had fought just now. Only with this one, there was something quite noticeably different.

His face was only half consumed by the substance that had claimed the other three and rendered them almost faceless. It grew like a fungus, and stretched around from the back of this man's head, draping itself over half his face and covering one eye completely.

The man's single eye bulged at him, wild and alive with inhuman feeling; hatred, wonder and disgust all burned within it at once. Then the cultist let out a hoarse roar and drew a knife from within his voluminous robe, frantically charging at Mysterion.

As the ornate dagger rose high and its polished metal glinted in the light, Mysterion dropped to the floor, sliding across the stone feet first. Executing a swift sliding tackle to the cultists legs, the hooded vigilante toppled his enemy immediately.

The previously held dagger clattered to the floor near to where Mysterion had ended up, so he reached for it instantly. But just as his olive green glove grasped the handle, the cultist reoriented himself and dove upon him. Leaping down on his prone form and taking hold of Kenny's neck.

Air was denied him as the cultist's powerful, slimy hands squeezed around his throat. The one eyed man was strong, but thankfully not as strong as the three others had been, otherwise Mysterion was positive his neck would've been broken.

Looping one arm round to clutch for the barb he hoped would be embedded in his opponents back, Mysterion simultaneously brought the dagger round as well. Then when his free hand caught the metallic spike which seemed to give these cult members their abominable form, Kenny dug the dagger in to help pry it free.

The knife helped Mysterion tear free the root in seconds, and as it slithered away from the new wound, so to did the inhuman fire in the cultist's eye die.

It was all well for him to dismantle those other three practically faceless creatures, but this man was half gone. One very human eye, alight with knowledge beyond this world, going dark. The one who had snuffed it out? Him…

It was not the first time this particular gripe had struck him. Having dispatched barely human creatures before, Kenny did not like to dwell on the implications when he could avoid them. A sign of his deteriorating moral fibre? He hoped not, but if this thing could be cured, could be redeemed, then what? Was he once an innocent man, forced into this by the hands of other cultists? Or did he accept this fate willingly, dare Kenny think it, eagerly? This would not be the first, nor the last time some poor human dabbled with forces they could not understand, seizing the power offered by unseen hands and subsequently falling to the allure of the cryptically unspeakable.

Throwing the rapidly disintegrating body from him, Mysterion turned to face the cloud of thick smoke in the centre of the room, from which sounds of combat could be heard. Refocusing his mind, Kenny's stone cold gaze picked out two remaining figures locked in a tussle.

A muffled, though somehow near deafening roar then broke over the electric hush of the dungeon. After which, one of the combatants shrouded in smoke was thrown clean out, crashing into the wall by the door. It was Batman.

Following the Dark Knight out of the fog, came one of the cultists. This one had robes of a different sort, made of a fine silk, and flowing about them freely, open at the front to reveal the cultists savagely emaciated torso. Their hood was down, revealing yet another horribly diseased face, this time devoid of even a full mouth, with only a small slit allowing sound out.

Mysterion acted immediately, throwing himself at the cultist and tackling them to the ground, cutting off its roar part way through as he drove the wind from it. As they crashed to the ground, the hooded teen jostled himself to where he had the thing pinned. He lifted his fist in the air and brought it down with all the strength and speed he had, before repeating the action three times. A wet smack issuing with each blow to the cult members face, if that is what you could call it.

Then he stepped up onto one foot, clutching the dazed humanoid around the neck and armpit. With little effort he lifted the robed monster off of the ground and threw it over his shoulder, pivoting with the action to propel the body further from him.

The throw had more power in it than Mysterion expected, and it sent the cultist soaring across the room to land in the pool of inky water.

The cultist sank like a stone, but did not resurface immediately. The water settled back down to stillness, and even as Batman stepped up beside Mysterion, the two were left in suspense as the humanoid did not reappear.

Almost simultaneously both Batman's and Mysterion's brows creased in suspicious displeasure… But even after a good twenty seconds, the surface of the reservoir remained unbroken. "I'm willing to bet those things need to breath. And that this chamber is connected to other locations via this pool here."

"A reasonable assumption." Assented Batman.

"Now unless we want to stand here for the rest of our lives waiting for it to return, we should get these people." Mysterion briefly gestured over to the cells, in which eight unconscious people of varying ages and ethnicities lay. "Out of here."

Batman nodded in agreement, saying. "I will contact Commissioner Gordon to-"

But Mysterion cut him off immediately at the mention of police involvement. "I can't allow that. The involvement of the police with matters like these would do far more harm than good."

"Say that again." The threat in Batman's gravelly voice was alarmingly evident, though it did nothing to deter the younger vigilante.

"Kidnappings and human trafficking are matters the police should most definitely be informed of, but I cannot allow knowledge of these cults and their existence to be made known. It's bad enough you were here to witness it." It was the way he had always done it, the fewer people who knew about this sort of thing, the better. As much as he hated it, it had been a good thing that the world forgot the Gulf Crisis. The matters of the mythos were best left unknown, rumours and legends at best.

"If I was not here, you would have been killed." The Bat reminded him coldly.

"And?" Once more Kenny matched the Bat-glare with one of equal intensity, all the meaning his reply implied burning behind his eyes. "How do you think the police would deal with knowing that an undead cult, who have the power to bend space to their will, were sacrificing people right under their noses? You understand the importance of secrecy, Batman, I'm sure. So I ask you, that you not reveal this location to the police for their own safety and peace of mind, as well as the publics. What they don't know won't hurt them. Not as long as I'm here."

Batman paused in silent consideration, before grunting and telling him. "Very well." He then swept over to the cells and set about breaking open the wrought iron door.

Instead of going to assist straight away, Mysterion took the moment of Batman's distraction to scour the room with his gaze, looking for anything he should take into custody, so to speak. Then he glimpsed it, a door was ajar on the opposite wall to the cells, through it he could see only blackness.

Walking over to it, the mystery boy pushed open the door and was given full view of the impenetrable darkness within. Even the light being let in through the door only intruded so far, illuminating only the grey green brickwork of the floor.

Mysterion's eyes were sharp, especially in darkness, but the only thing he could glimpse in this lightless space, was a wet glinting reflection of light opposite him. Slowly he withdrew the flashlight from his belt, and flicked it on.

The solid beam cut through the room, revealing on the far wall a terrifying, familiar face. The flashlight fell out of his grip as Kenny immediately pulled his gun, aiming at where the visage had appeared and pulling the trigger.

 _click_

The safety was on. Flicking it off in a millisecond Kenny started to squeeze the trigger again, but stopped as the flashlight rolled on the ground, tracing its beam across the room.

It's angle stretched up to illuminate the creature he had seen just now, but this time it shocked him less. Now he had noticed the face, and indeed what else it was attached to, were made of stone. He let his arm drop, a tight breath releasing itself from his panicked lungs. Picking up the flashlight in his free hand, Kenny looked upon the horrifying statuette in more detail.

The sculpted form of Cthulhu leered at him. A bas-relief of magnificent quality, but terrible subject. Its eyes were set with amber gems, which vastly contrasted with the grey-green colour of the stone that made up the rest of the totem. Cthulhu sat on a grand throne, its angles unseemly and sharp. The mass of tentacles that dribbled off its face, the draconic wings that sprung from its back, even the way it sat, crosslegged and hunched, made this sculpture one that inspired unease. Even in a stone depiction, Cthulhu had a way of creating fear.

Mysterion cast the light around the room more thoroughly, where it revealed a number of filthy beds and nothing more. These cultists had slept with _that_ watching over them… It caused Kenny to shiver slightly. Seeing nothing that he might take to add to his library of information on the occult underworld, Mysterion closed the door quietly and turned around to head back over to the Bat.

He found said vigilante standing across the room, watching him very closely. "Find anything." The Bat asked, his tone implying he had seen Mysterion's inspection of the room.

After a pregnant silence, Kenny replied. "What I expected to."

That was all he was willing to say on the matter, and since the cell was now open, Kenny began to haul the prisoners out one by one, moving them over to the exit. A motion which Batman joined in, and soon enough they had the hostages back in the unmarked van that was parked out in the oddly shaped tunnel.

As they set to driving the van back up to the surface, neither vigilante saying a word, Mysterion started to puzzle over the structure of this place. The distance they'd travelled and the purely bizarre architecture of this underground catacomb was odd for starters. Include with that, one snaking tunnel leading down to a spherical room? It was more reminiscent of a animal's burrow than anything manmade. Also, it was nowhere near as large, or as well stocked as he would've expected. The conclusion? This was not the main base of operations. This place, with all it's unusual though not entirely unnatural design, seemed more like a small outpost. A home away from home, but how far away was their first home? He could not tell right now. Although, he had ways of finding these things out.

When they emerged onto street level once more, Mysterion noted that a small section of the wall that had slid open to allow the van entry, had been exploded inwards. No doubt how Batman had accessed it.

Leaving the van just inside the alleyway, the two caped crusaders got out and as Batman seemed to be contacting someone via his cowl, Mysterion went back over to wall.

He couldn't leave it broken like this. The wall had slid open automatically to allow them to leave in the van, but when it shut behind them the hole that Batman had no doubt blasted in it to give him access, remained.

Mysterion considered for a moment how to block it up, not wanting anyone to find it. But then again, the cultists had proven themselves capable of creating anomalies of space to hide the entrance to their inner sanctum. In comparison this hidden door seemed mild…

Once again Mysterion listened for that call, the sensation that would let him know if anything occult had been tampering… He felt something, but the feeling was very faint. Like a far away whistle in the wind. But he could not find its source, so, for lack of a better, more permanent concealment, Kenny pulled a dumpster in front of it… Standing back he could not help but feel underwhelmed…

It was then that Batman finished his conversation, one which Kenny had been decent enough, and distracted enough to not eavesdrop on.

"The roof." Were the glowering hero's only two words, before he produced a fancy grapple gun from his belt and fired it into the air.

In seconds the Bat had ascended the night and been brought up to the roof. Feeling a twinge of envy, Kenny grabbed his grappling hook, and wound up to throw it at the buildings rooftop ledge.

A few seconds and a hasty climb later, Kenny vaulted onto the ledge of the building to find Batman standing a few feet away, with his sidekick standing right beside him.

Batman and Robin looked at him expectantly, and the only thing Mysterion could do was ask. "… So what now?"

—?M?—

A/N:

Here we go! Soon we can actually get some young justice up in this young justice/south park crossover! All in good time though, all in good time, which is fitting since I am terrible at updating. For which I apologise, but I have been inordinately busy recently. Hopefully I'll be able to remedy that as summer approaches, but I can't make any promises.

Now because it does take me a while to update, I do feel like I owe some form of authorial response since I've had some questions in the reviews, which I will now answer to some extent.

Other South Park characters appearing…? In time, yes. There will be cameos and more, but since I'm quite excited about what I have planned in this department I won't say any more. I don't want to jump the shark though, so don't expect any major involvement quite yet, this is a south park crossover, yes, but it is most definitely a Mysterion story.

Mysterion & canon DC villains… I don't have any concrete plans for this, so if you want to see Kenny take on any particular DC villain let me know in a review or via PM. Maybe I'll even start a poll. Though let it be known, I do have several ideas for good villains, both DCU and otherwise. But yeah, it won't be all cults and cosmic monstrosities all the time.

Kenny's character… I have been slacking on some of what makes Kenny McKormick, _Kenny McKormick_. This is partly because I haven't had enough of a chance to show that in volume, yet, and partly because Kenny has changed quite a bit. Years of being Mysterion and such. But don't worry, once again, I have plans for this.

The Joker… I loved the review asking me not to use the Young Justice Joker. Now, of course the Joker is going to appear, he's such a good villain that it'd be criminal not to involve him. But the version of the Joker in this story will most likely be a combination of my favourite ones, until I end up with the Joker that is right for this story. But for the record, there will be none of that canonical Young Justice Joker, that guy was like a 2edgy4u teen Joker. It was so painfully bad it was funny. Which is like the Joker I guess, but still.

Well that about wraps it up for this chapter, all that's left for me to say is… I'd give anything to see Mysterion in DC Rebirth… And thank you for reading!


	7. Night to day

Try to remember.

Chapter 7: Night to day.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park, Young Justice or anything in the Cthulhu mythos.

—?M?—

"Now, you explain in detail what it was exactly that we just encountered." Batman told him, making it abundantly clear in his tone that Mysterion had no choice but to answer. Or suffer the consequences.

Mysterion paused for a second, shooting a glance at the youngest of them. The boy wonder who couldn't be any older than fourteen. Of course, Kenny had technically started at an even younger age, but that didn't make him feel any better about revealing these secrets.

"… There are…" He had to think over his words for a moment, since it was never easy to describe the Outer Gods, The Great Old Ones, or any of their spawn and worshippers. Not to mention he didn't really want to give an answer, though deep down he felt like he owed one, or a version of one. "A number of loosely connected cults all over the world. Each one dedicated to worshipping a different, dangerous, alien, being…" Mysterion's brow wrinkled in consideration. He was skirting round anything that sounded too out there, he wanted to give them the big picture, but without giving them enough of one to pique the Batman's attention. Very few people were ready to learn the kind of things he knew, and even fewer were willing to believe him. So he stuck to neutral language, not saying words like Gods, All Powerful, Apocalypse, Nuclear Chaos, or any of those key words that were unfortunately all too common for him. "What you saw down there were, people, who had been given a gift from their patron… I won't name it. But I have been fighting these cults for most of my life, so know that I'll be looking into it further tomorrow night. There may be more hidden down there, and even if there isn't there's a lot that needs to be destroyed."

"Tomorrow night you say?" Was Batman's curious reply.

"Yeah?" The silent 'So what?' that followed Mysterion's answer was clear.

Batman mulled this over for a second, then made an affirming grunting sound and said. "Then you'll be taking Robin with you."

"What?" "What?" Mysterion's increasingly irritated answer collided with the Boy Wonder's surprised one.

"Robin needs more experience dealing with the world of the mystic arts." Was the Bat's explanation.

Slowly processing the idea of having to babysit a brightly coloured bird boy tomorrow night, Mysterion stared out over the city, before looking back to Batman and calmly saying. "This is not the _world of the mystic arts_ as you know it, Bat. And I'm not giving your sidekick work experience."

"Hey. I'm not a sidekick!" Were the first words Robin decided to interject into the conversation. Which only prompted a dismissing. "Whatever." From Mysterion.

His feathers ruffled, Robin squared his shoulders at Gotham's newest vigilante and protested. "Hey, what's your problem?"

"I don't need any help." He told the boy, quickly rising to the challenge. "In fact, I don't want any help. The fewer people who know about the kind of things I deal with, the better."

Stepping back in to mediate the burgeoning disagreement, Batman said. "If secrecy is your concern, then I assure you, you can trust Robin."

"Batman. Secrecy is my primary concern. I put the secrecy of these societies, above my own life. Because the more who know, the greater risk of exposure, of retaliation, of complete and utter widespread chaos." During the barely suppressed tirade, Mysterion had taken a few solid steps to stand face to face with Batman.

"Which is why you need backup." The Bat finalised. "So Robin _will_ accompany you. Do I make myself clear, Mysterion. You _are_ in my city, you _will_ operate by my rules." The gloves were proverbial off now, but Mysterion's reaction wasn't to cave in, but to say.

"I don't give a damn about your rules."

Then he threw himself clear of the building, cloak blooming against the lights of midnight Gotham. Until he fell, ten stories, landing on his neck and being immediately run over by a fast moving car. Smacks, crunches and cracks echoed through the air, but no one seemed to hear them. Because Mysterion was already dead.

Robin had run to the edge of the building, not believing the so-called vigilante could fly. He certainly seemed like a lunatic. Maybe he believed he could fly, the same way he believed in these conspiracy theory cults.

But as the Boy Wonder looked over the edge of the building, prepared to leap down and save Mysterion. He stopped short. Robin did see the body, spread eagled at the side of the road. He saw the smeared blood, the painful angles at which Mysterion's limbs were twisted. But he didn't exactly react… His eyes glazed over for the briefest second. He forgot. And then he spoke aloud.

"Where'd he go?"

Batman's expression did not change, it barely ever did, but the air of intensity around him increased at the revelation. Joining his partner in looking over the ledge, he could only wonder, how had Mysterion disappeared so suddenly… The answer was obvious. There was much more to this mysterious vigilante.

Then his cowl's inbuilt communicator beeped, and the voice of an elderly British man said, apprehensively. "Sir, the tracking device you placed on this Mysterion character earlier tonight? It seems to have stopped transmitting."

—?M?—

Kenny rolled out of bed, glancing at his alarm clock he took note that it was 1:41AM, which could only be a couple of minutes after he'd died. As much as he would like to just fall back into bed and sleep, he still had work to do before the morning. And since he had school tomorrow, what he had in mind ought best be done now.

Reaching under his bed, Kenny pushed aside a number of boxes and piles of clothes, until his hands grasped upon a suitcase. Sliding it out, Kenny shifted the numerical lock to face him, swiftly entering the four digit code of 0103.

The contents within were many, varied, and appallingly organised. One side was taken up by a spare Mysterion suit, with a handgun resting comfortably atop the folded fabric. Whereas most of the rest of the suitcase was filled with bits of paper, each small stack stapled together haphazardly, with the front pages bearing titles such as; _Notes on Black Brotherhood, Known enemies, Persons & places of interest._ And so many other plumes of paper. But at the very bottom of the pile there lay three, more important looking items; A letter addressed to Karen McKormick. A tiny silver key in a ziplock bag. And a small leather-bound notebook, bearing the title _Necronomicon (Incomplete)._

Once more pushing aside these items, Kenny found what he had been looking for at the very base of the case, where the odd bits of crap he kept fell. It was a length of rope that he had been looking for.

Taking it out, Kenny locked the suitcase back up, and took the rope over to his closet. With the regularity of a man going out to pick up a pint of milk, Kenny opened his closet, slung the rope over the metal bar from which his clothes hung, and closed the door behind him.

—?M?—

For the second time that night, Kenny's eyes snapped open, air rushing into his lungs as if for the first time. He sat up and saw that his surroundings were not the same. He'd done it. It, was a small semblance of control he had over his deaths, and even that iota of use he could get out of it was infrequent.

After a death, he could wake up somewhere else, to be specific, anywhere he had slept. All he had to do was maintain his concentration on that place as he died, which was understandably a difficult thing to do. But regardless, he had done it, woken up back in South Park, Colorado.

It was not his parents house, and the bed he was most familiar with that'd he chosen though. He had instead focused upon a small sleeping bag he'd hidden in the sewers, where he'd spent one cold night actually testing out this morbid teleportation ability. It had worked, and now Kenny had several locations he could, for want of a better word, teleport to. South Park, Denver, Gotham, Honolulu and Bucharest were the most notable on his list of locations. But as he pulled himself to his feet and stretched out the cricks in his bones, Kenny was stood beneath South Park's streets.

In every little bunker like this that he had, Kenny kept a spare Mysterion suit for situations exactly like this. And while there was the risk of some random person finding them, he didn't particularly care if anyone did. The little outposts he had were so difficult to get to, usually being in the sewers or some other unseemly place, that if someone did find his sleeping bags and spare suits, then good for them.

He donned the suit, dumped his coat, and headed for the surface, making quick time through the twisting and turning tunnels until he came upon a wrought iron ladder leading up.

Reaching the top, Mysterion shifted aside the heavy metal manhole cover, and emerged into the town of his birth. The town where some of his happiest, and most unhappy memories were made.

As it always was, the quiet mountain town was coated in a layer of crisp white snow, and little snowflakes fell down from the night sky like tiny stars. He'd surfaced in the alleyway behind Skeeter's Bar, and as the smell of hard liquor caught his nostrils, Mysterion scaled the building to get to a better vantage point.

Now roof-bound he could traverse the town much easier, and as he ran and leapt across the buildings, a wave of nostalgia hit him. But he would not let it hold him down for long, stopping only to take up his old perch above the Walgreens, before moving into the town's suburb to find the house he was seeking.

He vaulted fence after garden fence, eventually coming to a stop by a gnarled tree, climbing up it and shifting along the branch closes to the house whose garden he was now in. A small hop and he found himself perched outside a bedroom window. Then in no time at all he had the window open, allowing him inside. But he didn't step over the boundary yet.

The room was dark, both in decor and from simple lack of light. It also held the overwhelming musk of cigarette smoke, but the kind of scent that can only belong to a place that has long soaked in the thick vapour. He remained on the sill, and affixed his eyes on the lump of black sheets that occupied the room's bed.

"Henrietta." He said, using that hoarse, gravelly tone that he'd since noticed Batman also spoke with.

The lump of black fabric barely moved, and a very tired sounding voice mumbled nonsensically. "Fuck off, poser, bitch, life is meaningless…"

"Henrietta, It's me." He reiterated calmly.

The lump turned itself over, to reveal a bundled-up teenage girl with a veil of shaggy black hair falling over her pale face. Her large, incredibly tired eyes blinked several times at him, before she finally said. "… Haven't seen _you_ for awhile…"

"I've been busy." He replied stiffly,

She stifled a yawn. "Okay…" Then with an overlong roll of her bleary eyes. "Fine…" Followed by a heavy, exasperated sigh, she asked. "What do you want."

His request was simple, and no doubt she knew what he was here to ask. But his voice darkened nonetheless as he spoke it aloud. "I need to see your copy of the Necronomicon."

With one more dramatic sigh, she attempted to sound terse but in the end just sounded like she wasn't really bothered by his presence or request. "I gave you, like, half the pages to mine. Which was, not even complete in the first place. Do you know how rare English translations even are?"

Being patient he told her, as he usually did. "This is important."

"Always is." Finally sitting up to act, Henrietta yawned out the words. "Look away, and close the window to, you're letting the cold in."

As he slid into the room, turning to face the window while closing it behind him, Kenny McKormick considered how much he wanted to look behind him. But as Mysterion he could not let himself break focus like that. So he averted his gave to stare out the glass panes, up towards the gibbous, cloud covered moon with nothing but a regretful twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Some rustling and shuffling later, Henrietta's loamy voice called him back. "Okay, you can look now."

When he turned back she was hastily clothed in a flowing black night-gown, and holding on to a leather bound tome. Which she placed down on her desk, before lazily tilting her head at him and raising an eyebrow as if to say. 'Hurry up'.

He swept across the shag-pile carpet to stand over her shoulder. "So, what is it you're looking for this time." She asked him, with all the tiredness of someone who'd been woken up at two in the morning, with a question they'd been asked numerous times before.

"I've never encountered this cult before. I know little except what the members look like. They all wear robes coloured beige and light blue. They posses some form of un-life, which I suspect is caused by a fungus that grows over their bodies. The fungus itself seems to spread from a silver spike embedded in the spine. They had a sculpture of Cthulhu in their bedchambers, and finally, I believe they were engaging in sacrificial rituals… At their base of operations there was a pool of water that appeared to have been diluted with a darker liquid…" His voice remained gruff and neutral, delivering her the information in the hopes that she'd be able to help.

"Beige and blue…" The goth girl mumbled, thoughtfully leafing through her copy of the unholy book. "Wait… Silver spikes?"

"Some sort of metal, yes." Mysterion supplied, to which Henrietta clicked her fingers triumphantly and immediately flipped to a page about halfway though the book. Pausing over the symbols and drawings etched on the wafer thin paper, she began slowly turning page after page until she stopped, and said.

"Gla'aki… This look familiar?" She pointed down at the page, on which was drawn a horrible portrait. It was indeed familiar. The leering visage of the slug-like being he'd seen in his dream looked up at him from the page, it's trio of eyes staring directly at him. Almost as if the mere picture of this thing was alive somehow.

Then certain clues fell into place. Gla'aki, he'd heard the cultists speak that name. The creature he'd witnessed in that dream, a slug, it's back coated in metallic spines. Gla'aki… "This is it." He told her, grimly.

Her bloodshot eyes skimming over the text, Henrietta summed up the information for him. "Prophetic dreamer, ancient as our continents, came to Earth on a comet, dreaming visions of the future, holding knowledge beyond any mortal minds… Those who wish to learn unmentionable truths seek him out, and welcome him into their life…" She paused for a yawn. "I haven't got all the pages on it." She broke off, glancing at him over her shoulder. "But to summon him, or wake him, it looks like blood sacrifices are required."

Brow furrowing, Mysterion asked. "Any idea how I should deal with it."

"This isn't a cheat sheet, underwear boy." Turning to face him fully, her nose upturned, Henrietta tapped the page with one finger. "Gla'aki doesn't have weak points. It's a Great Old One, like Cthulhu, or any of the others you've asked me about. If someone is trying to summon it, the best you can do is stop them as soon as you can."

Close as they were, Kenny could smell the faint smell of cigarette smoke on her breath as he considered what she had told him… Keeping his eyes firmly locked with hers, and not daring to let them drift anywhere lower, Mysterion groused. "Then so be it." Before tearing himself away from the buxom teenager, and heading back to the window. "You have my thanks." He offered briefly.

"Whatever." Was her response, accompanied by a nonchalant flick of her unkempt hair. "Just let me know when you're going to drop by next time." Turning away, she drifted back over to her bed, saying as she sat down on the soft mattress. "And close the window after you-" But as Henrietta Biggle sat herself down to face the mysterious vigilante, from her languid position at the foot of her bed she saw only the open window, curtains fluttering in the wind, taunting her with the absence of her elusive and infrequent visitor.

"Conformist asshole…" She muttered, before reluctantly getting up, closing the window, and throwing herself back into bed.

—?M?—

He just needed a day, a moment, to kill his brain and be as everyone else. To not think about his nightly activities, about what was to come when the moon rose. He needed to push Mysterion to the side for a day… Kenny just hoped the day would be today.

He'd only gotten about an hours sleep after returning from South Park, and it could by no means be called a satisfying rest. But unlike most mornings, it was not his alarm clock that woke him up. It was instead his adoptive mother's voice warbling to him from downstairs. "Kenneth! We're about to go, if you're not ready we're leaving without you!"

With a barely decipherable sound, Kenny lurched to his feet, hurriedly putting on his school uniform and collecting up his books. Not paying much attention to what books he was picking up, or even what clothes he was putting where. So he'd tried a biology textbook as a shoe, piled his Mysterion suit into his schoolbag, and chucked a few books on floor before he was finally in a fit state to head out the house. Which is how he found himself, ten minutes later, engaging in a violent sprint down Gotham's breezy morning streets, with the cold air quickly and torturously waking him up.

In the end he was only forty or so minutes late, speeding through the wrought iron gates of Gotham Academy as the changeover between first and second period was in motion.

—?M?—

A/N: In this short chapter; Kenny all but tells Batman to fuck off, makes use of his dying, visits an informant, and feels the consequences of staying up late.

It's a bit of a short chapter, but I cut it in half and bumped the rest of the stuff I've written over into the next chapter. As a result the next chapter shouldn't take too long.

Thanks for the follows, favourites and reviews, they really get my writing momentum going.


	8. Schooled

Try to Remember

Chapter 8: Schooled

Disclaimer: I don't own South Park, Young Justice, or any of the works that collectively make up the Cthulhu Mythos.

—?M?—

Kenny let his feet fall into rhythm with the crowd, bringing his jog down to a quick stride as he weaved through his fellow students. All the while sticking out like a sore thumb with his less than perfect uniform. Shirt poorly buttoned, tie loose around his neck, one shoelace untied, and his orange parka over the top with it's hood down and unzipped, giving the impression of someone who had very little care for how they looked.

Maybe the brisk run here had blown Kenny's mind clean of something, but he found himself feeling less troubled by the events that had occurred last night beneath Gotham. Right now he was just another student. Lounging against one wall of the school's front courtyard, Kenny took a moment to soak up the sun and air out his mind.

His head listed lazily to the side, dirty blonde hair falling over his forehead as he watched students walk by into the main building.

 _'_ _She's a seven point two… She's a four, but her friend is an eight… An even six… A fine nine!'_

"I love you, Gotham Academy." Kenny muttered under his breath, his easy smirk splitting into a much more gleeful, mischievous grin. The girls of Gotham Academy were much more refined in what they wore, being that the uniforms were strictly set. But to Kenny's mind, all that did was encourage them to find more subtle and appealing ways to look, oh so very nice.

The weather was perfect, the girls were as as good looking as ever, and if he was honest, Kenny was quite happy with where he was at… He didn't exactly have any friends here yet, but hey, he hadn't really been trying to make any.

As his eyes were unashamedly exploring the long-sock wearing legs of his class's representative, Bette Kane, his line of sight as suddenly invaded by the startling visage of a much angrier blonde girl. The face of Loretta Inzerillo glared at him, her nose still bearing a beak of bandaging from what he'd done to her for daring to mess with Karen.

"Did you know?" She demanded, her voice hoarse but fierce, sounding as if she'd been straining it for some time.

Stepping away from the wall, Kenny faced her fully, looking down at her from where he stood a full foot and a half taller than her. "Know what?"

"About my father." Her challenging demeanour remained concrete.

Raising an eyebrow, curious, Kenny asked. "What about your father?"

"That he was a-" Her voice cracked, faltering for a moment. "-a criminal."

"Oh, yeah." Was his instant reply.

Slowly her face bunched up, her hands rising to clutch her hair, balling into fists and shaking with rage. Her eyes shut tight, she took all her built up fury, and released it in a stamp of her foot and a shout not unlike the bark of a small dog. Then her hands instantly rose again, this time to cover her eyes and half adjust her bandages.

Taken aback by her reaction, but suspecting he knew from where her anger stemmed, Kenny asked gently. "What's the problem?"

The proverbial dam broke, and the words came streaming out. "Everyone knew, except me! All my friends, they were just pretending to be nice to me! Now they don't have to, so they look at me either like I'm an idiot who should be pitied, or some kind of evil, _bitch_ , who deserves it! It makes me so fucking angry…! He was lying to me all the time, Kenny!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you read the fucking news , moron! My daddy, was caught by the Batman, selling drugs and-and, weapons, and-and-and _people_!" With what could only be tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, Loretta glared at him expectantly.

"… Why are you telling me this?" Was all he could offer her in response, clearly unable to provide her with the reply she wanted.

"Weren't you listening, my friends abandoned me!" The girl reminded him.

Kenny rolled his eyes, trying not to sound as tired as she was making him feel. "Yeah, I was listening. And so is everyone else." He cast a little look around the courtyard, where a number of the passing students had stopped to watch their less than ordinary interaction. Putting an arm around her shoulder, Kenny led her away and into the school. "Come on, walk and talk with me."

Loretta stewed in her simmering anger as they made their way into the school, and when they were out of earshot of their previous onlookers, said. "My daddy was lying to me… About so much. Why? Why did he lie."

Dropping his arm from around her shoulder and shoving both hands into his coat pockets, Kenny shrugged and postulated. "I think he lied because, I dunno, because he wanted to keep you safe?"

Loretta's reply was swift and sharp. "My brother knew. The house staff even knew. Everyone here knows. Everyone knew except me. Why didn't he tell me? Why couldn't I figure it out by myself? Am I just dumb? Tell me, am I dumb?"

Where before she had been angry, now she was growing sad, and Kenny was damned if that didn't tug at his heart strings a little. He sighed and began to talk. "I think you're very angry right now. I think you're not the nicest person I've ever met. I think you're smoking hot. I think you're a spoiled rich girl who doesn't know shit about the reality of what her father actually did… But I don't think you're dumb and I'll tell you why… Because you're asking yourself those questions. You're facing the truth rather than hiding from it. Dumb people don't do that."

"… I don't know how to feel about any of those things you just said…" Her reply was mirrored in her body language, as she was just standing, staring up at him with her wide, bloodshot blue eyes.

"Eh, maybe that's progress." He shrugged in response, no really caring what she thought.

Then Loretta drew in a calming breath, and stated with newfound resolve. "I'll tell you one thing for sure though, Kenny. This is never going to happen again. I never want to feel this, weak and stupid again. Ever…"

"Whatever. I've got class, so, see ya." And as he walked away from her, Kenny found himself feeling far more than a slight stab of pity for the girl. He didn't think much of her by any stretch of the imagination, but he'd have to be a completely heartless bastard not to feel something akin to sympathy for Loretta Inzerillo. No matter what she had done to him or his sister.

So he walked away from her, rounded the corner at the end of the hall and headed for class, which just so happened to be history. Which wasn't too bad, history was definitely among his favourite subjects, and not just because he knew a lot more about it than his other classes.

But as he stepped into the classroom, his rekindling mood was once again doused, this time by his teacher. A tweed suited man who sternly told him. "Mr. McKormick, I daresay I should give you detention for your flagrant disregard of our Academy's uniform code… But I think at this point more detentions might just be overkill." The already seated students snickered behind their hands at Kenny's reprimanding, but the old teacher wasn't wrong. Kenny had more detentions than you could shake a stick at, and he was only just nearing the end of them all. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck here any longer, when he could be doing other, more productive things with his time. Either as Mysterion, or as Kenny.

So with a sigh, Kenny replied. "Sorry about that, Mr. Murray. Won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't. Now take you seat and fix your tie, because today we're taking a field trip to Egypt!" Mr. Murray declared joyously while Kenny approached his desk.

"Wait, what!?" Was the startled response from many of the students.

"Ancient Egypt, that is! With the power of learning I'll take you on an imaginary field trip back to the reign of Alhireth-Hotep!" Their now smiling history teacher beamed, throwing his arms wide and trying to pull some magic schoolbus bullshit on them.

As the rest of the students groaned en masse, Kenny sank into his chair and began fixing his tie.

—?M?—

So it was, that after the school day had drawn to a slow, monotonous close, Kenny McKormick was still imprisoned within the walls of Gotham Academy. Scrubbing away at the window of the boys toilets with some heavy duty disinfectant, mop, bucket and trolley of cleaning supplies by his side curtesy of that lazy ass janitor. The janitor who had gone home early and left Kenny with instructions to lock up when he was done. So why had he not left when there was not a soul to supervise him?

"Stupid, piece of, filth… Get, off." He had been scrubbing at the same wad of encrusted filth in the corner of a window for the last ten minutes, and no matter what methods he applied it would not be cleaned. "Fuck!"

Finally he was about to give up, throwing his marigold rubber gloves back into his cleaning trolley, when Kenny heard a rather loud crash.

His head snapping to alertness, snd Kenny ventured slowly out of the toilets, listening for the source of the disturbance. Then it hit again, from far down the hall to his right, originating from behind the gymnasium doors. Only this time it kept going, sounds of splintering wood, crumbling plaster, all occurring at irregular yet frequent intervals.

Cautiously, Kenny approached the double doors and peered in through the small glass window that was set into the upper part of them. Years of busting into rooms only to be impaled or crushed, or just generally killed in a horrific fashion, had instilled him with such a sense of wariness when tackling unknown situations.

What he saw within was far from the worst he could've expected, but was still enough for him to retract his head so that he would not be spotted. Because inside the sports hall was a large, seven foot tall robot, gun metal grey and looking as pissed as an emotionless robot could look. The metal humanoid was in the middle of combating a teenager, who appeared completely ordinary at first glance, but from what Kenny had seen this boy was anything but.

The teenager had been throwing punches and leaping around like some kind of enraged, superpowered animal. And that red S on his shirt gave Kenny a good idea as to how this guy was doing it. "More fucking heroes." He murmured, displeased.

If only he had brought his costume with him… Wait… Kenny smacked himself in the head. He had brought his costume with him! If only by sheer accident.

Dashing back to the toilets Kenny darted in and went to his bag, which was sat on top of the cleaning trolley. But then he froze. A thought was running through his head, one that might prove detrimental if he wanted to change so suddenly. CCTV.

As the door swung shut behind him, Kenny surveyed the room. No cameras in here, for obvious reasons. But he wouldn't put it past the school to have cameras at regular intervals in the halls at least. So how could he change without making it obvious that it was Kenny McKormick who was Mysterion… Then his eyes caught that dirty goddamn window, and his face lit up with a smile.

A quick change in the cubicle, and Mysterion emerged. Kenny counted himself lucky he had his costume, but his luck had its limits. He didn't have his gun with him. Still, with a quick scramble he had poised himself at the small window, and was squirrelling himself out of it.

Outside he found himself dropping into a small alleyway that was closed off from the rest of the outside. For good reason probably, because it stank like faeces and disinfectant. Ignoring the smell, Mysterion set about getting himself up onto the roof, deciding to enter the gym from the windows instead of circling around and risking exposure to the security cameras.

Springing up onto the window ledge once more, Mysterion used that foothold to jump from perch to perch, until he found himself dangling from the roof ledge. Then pulling himself up onto the roof, the young vigilante stood there surveying the skyline with a confident smirk.

Mysterion immediately caught himself and schooled his expression. He needed to stop being cocky, he was Mysterion now, not Kenny McKormick. So putting on a stern face, Mysterion locked his eyes onto where the gymnasium's roof stood taller than the surrounding building and set off. Crouching low he ran across the open space, vaulting small ledges and stepping over the countless lost footballs and baseballs that had accumulated up here over the years. When he reached the wall of the gym, Mysterion stuck close to it, circling round the taller building until he reached the windows. Great big paned glass frames that granted him a perfect view of what was going on inside.

New arrivals had joined S-shirt in fighting this robot, three of whom he knew, because he'd have to have been living under a rock not to have at least recognised them. Robin, Aqualad, and Speedy, or Speedo… Kenny couldn't quite remember, but the boy was a speedster and that was all that mattered at the moment. Then there was an attractive green skinned girl floating in the air across the hall.

They were all preoccupied fighting an uphill battle against this grey android, too preoccupied to notice the spindly, middle aged man who had been sat by the bleachers with an entourage of flying robot monkeys. A man who quietly and with a worried look on his face, headed for the door.

Mysterion found himself wanting to help the burger king kids club of heroes, but against an enemy as seemingly powerful as this, he would most definitely die. Especially since he didn't have half his already mediocre arsenal. He could however head off this suspicious monkey man at the front gates, which, knowing the school like he did, Mysterion assumed to be the exit the man was headed for.

Regretfully, Kenny turned from the window and sprinted across the roof for where the school building opened up into the courtyard.

Easily, Mysterion bounded up onto the fancy stonework of the front entrance, and looked down the four storey drop to where that same scrawny man was right now bolting out of the doors, with one less monkey he noted.

Not willing to put his body to the test and make the full four floor drop, Mysterion instead leapt off of the ledge, aiming for one of the many artful stone pillars that lined the schools front court. He dropped about two floors height in the jump and collided with the pillar, which he then used to slow his fall, pushing off the stone and soaring across to another. Now he was at a safe height to at least survive the fall, so kicking away from this pillar, Mysterion's royal purple cape billowed in the wind as he landed directly in the middle of the court, a scarce ten feet from where Mr. Monkey was ahead of him, still sprinting for the gates.

He only had time to look up, before a shout caught his ear. "Look out!" And something struck him in the side, opening up and wrapping around him, carrying Mysterion across the courtyard where he eventually tumbled to a halt. Now entangled in a net.

"You got in the way! Wait. Who are _you_?" He could barely see the speaker, but whoever she was she had the worst timing ever. Grumbling under his breath, Mysterion slipped the switchblade out of his belt and severed enough of the ropes to tear himself free, growling as he did so. "He's getting away."

He'd been through the whole, who are you, spiel with Batman, and right now Mysterion wasn't keen on wasting any time. If he couldn't fight the android, he could catch this suspicious, fleeing asshole. He barely took a moment to glance at the girl, before taking off towards the school gates, where the red headed fellow was getting into a waiting black sedan.

As Mysterion made it to the sidewalk the car was pulling out, taunting him as the blank licence plate moved away. But then something interesting caught his eye, several high tech looking motorbikes, parked and discarded nearby. One of them had on it's front a stylised red letter R.

Mysterion was in motion before the idea had even fully formed, righting the bike and finding the keys thankfully still in the ignition. Boy Wonder probably didn't expect to be here long, Kenny thought dryly as he mounted the vehicle, making only a brief mental note to return it later.

"Wait, that's Robin's bike." Mysterion turned his head as he heard the female hero's voice. His apparently accidental attacker was a striking girl wearing a dark green costume, with an exposed midriff and an orange arrowhead emblem emblazoned on its chest. A quiver of arrows was hanging from her shoulder, and a frankly magnificent blonde ponytail was poking out from behind her half-mask, trailing down over her other shoulder. In her hand was an expensive looking bow, leaving Mysterion's mind to jump to the conclusion that she was probably somehow associated with the Star City hero Green Arrow. Given the three other well known young heroes he'd seen, along with the green girl and the S-shirt, Kenny could easily assume she was with them. Which was good enough for him, as he bluntly told her. "i know. Now get on."

"What?" Was her affronted response.

"Get on the bike." He repeated, not seeing the problem.

Hurriedly she began. "I'll take the other-" But cutting her off, seeing as the car was getting further and further away by the second, Mysterion snapped. "I drive, you shoot. Now get on!"

"Oh!" She exclaimed in realisation, hopping on behind him and wrapping one strong, slender arm around his torso, while the other held on to her bow. Then Mysterion revved the engine, and they took off.

It took him about four seconds to gloriously say. "I _need_ to get one of these." Because holy shit were they moving fast. But unfortunately the sedan had a good head start on them, however Kenny had seen it's first turn, and in no time at all he had it back in his sights.

At this time of day the streets in this neighbourhood were pretty barren, so in catching up to the car, Mysterion pulled up behind and to the left of it, telling his passenger. "Archer! Hit the wheels!"

Looping her arm out from around him, the archer took her bow in both hands, pushing herself up on the bike to get a better angle. As a result her chest was pressed right up against Mysterion as she leant on him for balance, with one of her legs now hooked around his chest. And God be damned if Kenny McKormick didn't have a raging… massive desire… for justice… Asserting to himself within his mind that right now he was _Mysterion_ , Kenny kept the bike on a firm course as they sped down the open suburban streets.

The archer fired off arrow after arrow, and when the third did find its mark, hitting the back left tyre directly, the unmarked vehicle swerved violently but did not show any signs of slowing down or coming to a halt. Despite having one of its tyres blown out.

Coming up with a new plan on the fly, Mysterion urged the bike onwards, its engine roaring as they rounded a sharp turn, overtaking the sedan in the process. Once more calling out to his passenger, he shouted over the whipping wind and thunderous engines both car and bike. "Take the wheel!"

"There is no wheel!" She shouted back at him, from where she had rotated to fire arrows back at the car behind them.

"You know what I mean!" He snapped at her acerbic comment, and though he could not see her face, Mysterion could practically hear the rolling of her eyes. Nevertheless she complied with his plan, hitching herself up and over him as he himself ducked down to switch positions with her. Absolutely not getting an erection at all as her legs and thighs slid over his head.

The motorcycle shook for a second, but the archer soon got Robin's borrowed bike back under control, and now Mysterion was in place to commence his plan B.

He threw himself off the back of the motorcycle, and at the tinted windscreen of the abnormally fast and resilient sedan.

He heard a wordless shout of surprise from the archer, as he became momentarily suspended in the air, moving at excessively high speeds. This was the kind of moment where, if he was in a movie, Kenny would expect the slow motion camera to kick in, making it seem like time changed speeds. But no, he was on the bike one second, and smashing into what felt like a reinforced sheet of glass the next.

His hand shot out and grabbed ahold of where the car bonnet made a slight lip up against the window, and he held on. He took a second to reorient himself, then the car started swerving in the road, trying very hard to throw him off.

But Kenny had experienced more discomforting situations than this, and managed to poise himself on the front of the car. Raising his arm high, Mysterion brought his fist down on the glass. It hurt, but the small spider web of cracks that appeared where his hand had hit, was enough to tell him this wasn't a fool's errand. So he punched again, and on the third repetition, his hand met the windscreen at the same time as an arrow did. Both shattering the reinforced glass completely.

Mysterion looked back momentarily, to see the archer girl with one hand on the handlebars, her teeth bared and gritted, half turned to face him having apparently fired an arrow one-handed with her teeth.

Grinning back at her, his hand broken and bloody, Mysterion turned to the car and descended into it. What he found surprised him. The only person in there was the scrawny so-called Ivo sat in the back. In place of a driver the steering wheel seemed to be moving itself, while Ivo was twiddling about with his robot monkey. A phrase Kenny noted was probably a euphemism.

Ivo looked up, shock and fear overtaking his expression, as he saw Mysterion's figure taking up the place where the windscreen should've been. Seemingly throwing caution to the wind, Ivo flung his metal primate at Mysterion just as he entered the vehicle, yelling in a panicked, piping voice as he did so. "Abort; sequence 4!"

As Mysterion shoved the motionless robot to the side, he was alarmed to see Ivo reach for the door of the speeding car, open it, and jump out… For a second, Kenny was left at a loss for what had possessed this normal man to do such a thing. Then whatever Ivo had commanded the machines, took effect and Mysterion realised why Ivo did not want to be in this car right now.

The steering wheel wrenched itself to the side, there was a screeching of rubber on asphalt, and the unremarkable black vehicle lifted up off of the ground.

Rending metal and smashing glass was all Mysterion could hear as the car flipped, barrel rolling through the air and continuing on to tumble down the road. His left leg was snapped between the gear stick the bent metal of the roof. His arms were caught and macerated against the road, from where he'd been scrambling to get out the open door Ivo had left through. Then finally, as the car rolled to a clamorous halt, Mysterion, still alive, found himself face to face with the flashing red eyes of Ivo's last metal ape.

 _Beep_ … _Beep… Beep…_

He only managed to gurgle out a last curse word, before the monkey exploded, incinerating his body and igniting the car and it's fuel tank, causing further combustion in the wrecked sedan.

—?M?—

Artemis had pulled Robin's bike to a stop in a nearby alleyway; she was distressed and disturbed after having seen that stranger in the question mark hood be blown up in the wreck. But as she waited out of sight to see if the paramedics could pull him free from the wreck, she was growing ever more disconcerted.

After having watched from afar for a good ten minutes, she and the distant paramedics were puzzling over the fact that there was no body.

She had seen him in the car as it flipped, she had definitely not seen him get out before it exploded… Unless he had superpowers of some kind, there was no way he could've gotten free. Was there?

As she wondered on this, the teenager heard someone cough behind her, and when she turned around the young hero was presented with one of the last things she wanted to see.

Her mentor was standing there, with none other than the Batman beside him… She was in deep trouble.

—?M?—

A/N: I guess I should stop saying when the next chapter will probably be, huh? Yeah it took a while, but I've been busy as ever. Although this chapter did go through a number of drafts, and originally the whole thing with Artemis and the car chase wasn't even in it. But hey, I think it turned out quite well.

Anyway, since I take so long with these chapters, if you have any burning questions, leave them in a review and maybe every other update I'll answer one or two of them.

Make sure to tell me what you think in a review, follow/favourite if you liked it, and as always, thank you for reading!


	9. Sacrifice

Try to remember

Chapter 9: Sacrifice.

Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice, South Park, or anything that comprises the Cthulhu Mythos.

Warning: This chapter is the most gruesome yet, depending on your approach to gruesomeness, but regardless, there is blood.

—?M?—-?M?-

Kenny woke up to complete silence, feeling an overwhelming sense of being far too warm. As his memories caught up with him, Kenny groaned in disappointment. That Ivo character had escaped him, and unless the archer had ignored the car wrecking itself, then Ivo might've gotten away completely.

Sitting up, Kenny pulled off his coat and chanced a quick look at the clock. 21:54. His night was still young. He had time to have a bite to eat, swing by Gotham Academy to grab his school bag out of the bathroom he'd left it in, then come back here, and head out to pick through the Gla'aki cultist's hideout.

Getting dressed quickly, Kenny left his room and headed downstairs, where he was met by the sight of his adoptive parents sitting on the couch watching the news. "Kenneth? I didn't know you were back." Jonathan told him, to which the messy blonde replied by merely shrugging, and moving into the kitchen.

Sluggishly, he put the kettle on, bringing out two mugs. One would be a coffee for him, the other a strong tea for Karen. As the beverages brewed, Kenny began making himself a snack. Then when he was done, he took the mugs in one hand and made his way back upstairs, stopping at Karen's door and for lack of any free hands, kicked at it a bit.

There was no reply, so he spoke out loud. "Karen?" Yet there was still no reply. So placing the mugs down on the floor, Kenny opened the door and peered inside. Where he found no sign of Karen being there. His brow creasing in concern, Kenny picked the mugs back up and went downstairs again. This time he spoke to the Dupuis' and asked them. "Hey, where's Karen?"

"Oh, Karen is staying at her friend's house tonight." Marietta answered him, not looking away from the financial report that was being shown on the TV screen. Something about LexCorp and WayneTech struggling to stay on top of the market, all sorts of financial stuff that he didn't understand.

Humming in affirmation, Mr. Dupuis added fondly. "She started taking self defence lessons with them as well. Your sister is very diligent, Kenny." Only a mild tone of 'you should be more like your sister' entered his voice.

Kenny merely nodded and agreed. "Yeah. She is…" Then as an afterthought he handed the mug of tea to Mrs. Dupuis, saying. "Here, you can have her tea then."

"Thank you, Kenny." The woman replied, before taking a sip and remarking. "Oh, this is very bitter!"

"That's the way she likes it." He informed, until finally saying. "… Anyway, good night."

"Good night, Kenneth." Both chorused as he ascended the stairs once more, this time making his way into his own room.

Then he commenced what felt like the only rest he'd had in the last week, taking a good twenty minutes to just drink his coffee and eat his snack.

After that it was back into his costume, load up his equipment, whose supply he glumly noticed was dwindling, and head out into the city. By the time he'd collected his bag from Gotham Academy, dropped it back at the house and proceeded to head into downtown Gotham, it would be 1:30AM.

—?M?—

Mysterion had descended into the dead end alley, and was busying himself with investigating the wall he knew opened into the cult's secret entrance, when from behind him he heard. "You're already here." The voice of a young boy turned his attention up to the fire escape nearby. Where he saw the Boy Wonder perched, cape falling around his shoulders, and with a look on his face that showed him to be a little annoyed at being here.

Mysterion mumbled in response, still trying locating the opening to the tunnel, as to his chagrin the hole that had breached it last time was gone without a trace. While he puzzled over the matter, Robin continued. "So I heard you took my bike for a joy ride."

"Batman tell you that…?" He answered rhetorically, before remembering how that little chase had ended and commiserating by adding. "It wasn't much of a joy ride."

"Yeah. Batman's not too happy with you." Robin smirked, dropping down from the metal rails and landing with nary a sound. "That crash could've hurt a lot of people. Probably did a lot of property damage too. And Ivo got away."

Normally Mysterion would let the boy's tone of disapproval go, but considering how beat up the school had looked, Kenny did not let his comment go unaddressed. "Minimal property damage. Can't say the same for you and your squad. That little fight at Gotham Academy was anything but subtle."

"You saw that?" Robin's domino mask rose up slightly, curious surprise evident on his face.

Mysterion nodded, still examining the brickwork, feeling with his hands and mind for any kind of crease. "Yeah. I was in the neighbourhood, and it's hard to miss a seven foot tall android throwing itself around… I was going to help out, but, while you had your eyes off Ivo he slipped out of the gym. I went to intercept but, lets just say your archer friend and I got tangled up and he got a head start on us."

"So you met Artemis, huh?" Surprise tempered, the Dark Knight's squire settled for standing idly behind Mysterion, while he worked on the wall.

"That her name?" He grumbled, then saying appreciatively as he remembered her one handed arrow firing. "She's a good shot."

"Yeah. She's not on the team exactly, yet. But yeah, she's good, from what I've seen." Robin told him, their tone becoming less confrontational and more conversational.

"Alright." Kenny agreed, before stepping clearly away from the wall, having found the mystical trigger, the eldritch door handle so to speak. Nudging it with his mind, the plain brick surface slid aside, folding in on itself in an almost physically impossible fashion, revealing within the darkened and winding tunnel. "So we gonna do this or what?" He asked the young hero, who had done a double take at the sudden change Mysterion had triggered.

Nodding affirmatively, Robin gestured forwards and said. "After you."

Taking his flashlight out, Mysterion clicked the switch and a bright beam of light illuminated their path. The grey-green brick of the passageway extending ahead, curving round and descending. Peculiar architecture, but then again that wasn't the only thing peculiar about this place.

They'd barely taken a few steps in when Robin piped up, questioning sarcastically. "A flashlight?"

"Yeah. Whats wrong with that?" Mysterion replied, pausing at the threshold to fix Robin with a withering glare.

"Nothing." The boy excused, raising his hands in the air placatingly. "Just a bit low-tech is all."

"How are you seeing then." Kenny shot back, flicking his head to indicate the nigh impenetrable darkness of the tunnel.

"Night vision in my mask's lenses." The Boy Wonder smiled, tapping the side of his domino mask.

Mysterion rolled his eyes, before swiftly turning and heading into their objective, commented off handedly as he did so. "Good enough for some."

They were a few more steps inside when the stone wall slid closed behind them, sealing them inside the deep dark of the underground. Neither said anything, reacting only by turning to stare at the door for a second, before resuming their trek.

The awkward silence stretched on for a long while as they walked, no sound but their footfalls being made, until Mysterion spoke up, more to keep conversation alive than anything else. "Couldn't have brought your bike?"

Robin made a sound of agreement, finding similar tedium with the long walk they had embarked upon. But soon answered dejectedly. "Batman kind of, bike grounded me. Since I left the keys in it."

Mysterion let out a low sniff of laughter, before adding. "That's not too bad. Most kids your age would be complaining they weren't allowed to go out after six o'clock. While you can't ride your super-bike when you go and fight criminals at one in the morning."

Robin laughed, but didn't add anything. So the two kept walking, Mysterion illuminating the path with his flashlight, while Robin trudged along beside him, the lenses of his domino mask shining with an eerie light.

Eventually the Boy Wonder spoke again, attempting once more to fill the silence as they made they way ever deeper beneath Gotham. "You know question marks are the Riddler's thing. right?"

"I don't care." Was his only thought on that matter, it hadn't mattered when he'd come up with his costume, it didn't matter now. And so what if some Gotham nut job had a question mark fetish, Mysterion only had one point of puzzling punctuation on his costume. It was symbolic, for that one question they always asked. 'Who are you?'

"Okay… So why'd you choose them then?" Robin pursued inquisitively.

"Why'd you call yourself Robin." Kenny fired back, a tad defensively.

"I've kind of got a colour scheme going on." Was the reply, Robin lifting his cape a little to show the yellow underside.

"Then why do you dress like a colourblind girl scout?"

"Jerk." At that, Mysterion finally laughed out loud, and replied with a sense of dark humour about his gravelly tone. "Oh gee wizz, golly gosh Robin, I hope I'm not being a jerk. Did I hurt your feelings?"

"Cut it out…" Replied the Golden Boy Wonder of young superheroes. Followed by a small hesitation, and then. "Asshole… And never do that again, it was like Batman trying to be funny. Just made me cringe."

By the time their bickering was at an end, the beam of Mysterion's flashlight had met with a dead end. Searching his light around the eldritch vigilante soon found the same single stone door, heavily set into the wall.

Pushing forward him and Robin ventured into the antechamber, that strangely spherical room with the pool of algae topped silvery water in it. But this time the pool was empty, leaving only a small indentation in the ground where the pool had been, no liquid in sight. The exquisite runes still remained however, carved into the stone around the edge of the depression.

A little apprehensively, Robin broke the almost suffocating silence that had fallen over them. "So, what did you and Batman find down here then?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"He told me some of what happened. But we've been busy." Robin told him apprehensively, scanning his eyes around dark room very intently.

"Alright." Kenny accepted, crouching down at the edge of the pool to press a hand to its floor. Feeling for anything out of place, either physically or otherwise. "Until last night this was the hideout of a minor occult organisation. A cell of about ten cult members, all with some form of supernaturally induced immortality. You don't need to know their name, or what they stand for, all you need to know is they engage in blood sacrifices…" He let the fact hang in the air for a while, then adding. "That should be reason enough to want each and every one of them behind bars."

Robin did not reply, so Mysterion continued. "They had been procuring human sacrifices from Enrico Inzerillo. Then funnelling them down here, and… Well you'll see in the next room what they were doing…"

Robin grimaced, looking around uneasily, before asking. "So what's this you're looking at?"

"Not quite sure. I can't read all the runes, most of these sorts of cults have their own language, or dialect at least. Usually some ancient hieroglyphics or runic symbolism." Mysterion lectured, examining the empty pool and carved sigils more thoroughly than he'd had a chance to when it was him and Batman down here. "Seven times out of ten its derived from ancient Egyptian, but here we're looking at some more anglicised runes. This spiral, with the counter clockwise spiral on its right and the line bisecting the two as a horizon, means something like transportation over a vast body of stormy water… I think. I'm not fluent in their languages, but I've been around enough to grasp certain aspects."

Robin made a vague noise of understanding, as Mysterion continued to think out loud. "But I'm not sure why it would be here… There was water in this pool last night, but now… Gone without a trace… Could it be some kind of teleportation circle? But, teleporting water? Maybe they used it to get from place to place… But all these runes." Kenny ran a green gloved hand over a set of runes. "All these symbolise distance, so if this pool did teleport it would be across thousands of miles at least."

"So like a zeta-tube?" Robin piped up.

Mysterion turned to Robin and gave him a mildly quizzical look, asking. "Zeta-tube?"

"Oh." Was the sadly intoned realisation Robin expelled, looking slightly guilty with himself. "Its… A teleport system the league uses. It's not exactly public knowledge, so…"

Staring blankly for a second, Mysterion then merely shrugged and stood up. "Night vision masks, super-bikes, grappling guns, teleporters. How fucking rich are you people."

Quick to retort, Robin said. "Well the league has a lot of benefactors, businesses, private companies, and just people who donate to us."

"Like?" Kenny asked, curiosity now burning at the back of his mind. The Justice League had funding, financial backing. It wasn't something he'd thought about before, but now, it seemed obvious.

"That's confidential. Gotta keep their privacy and all." The Boy Wonder replied, anxious to get away from the topic.

"You don't want to tell me? That's fine. I could probably guess." The hooded vigilante mused, amused at the possibility of unravelling this mystery, and causing Robin to panic at having revealed apparently secret information about teleport technology, and superhero funding. "Lets see, who are the most vocal supporters of the Justice League." Running over just general discussions he'd seen on the news numerous times, the kind of reports that were broadcast daily, given the Leagues regular heroics. "Oliver Queen is an obvious one. Maxwell Lord another. Fuck it, I wouldn't be surprised if Bruce Wayne is putting some money into it… Am I right?" He turned to Robin, only to find the Boy Wonder glaring at him with a poor imitation of Batman's Bat Glare, the one Mysterion had found himself on the receiving end of the previous night, where he had been as equally unaffected as he was now. In fact, all he did to reply was smirk and say. "I'm right."

"Alright, well done. Can we move on?" The young hero snarked, throwing his arms out in exasperation.

Letting out a low chuckle, Mysterion moved towards the only other door in the room, and said just. "Sure." Remaining satisfied that in a few seconds he'd guessed three of the Justice League's financial backers.

Leading the way through the other door into that same small, dead end corridor, Mysterion strode up to the brick blockade and at once focused his gaze on the right corner. Space warped and matter travelled via paths that most humans could not hope, nor would ever wish, to comprehend. And Kenny stared straight at it with nothing more than a blank stare. Half turning his head to regard Robin, he impressed upon the boy in as direct a way as he could, the importance of his instructions. "Robin. When I've gone through, you close your eyes and do the same. Do not open them until I tell you. Do you understand?"

Confused at the sudden increase in severity, Robin got the message loud and clear, nodding once to show he understood.

Facing the dimensional inconsistency, Kenny stepped through, feeling nothing as he emerged on the other side. But the panicked scream that followed him didn't seem to have Mysterion's knack for these anomalies, as Robin was thrown through into the other side, collapsing against the far wall, retching and wobbling on his knees.

"W-what, the fuck was that!?" The young boy demanded, his voice quaking.

Circling back to their earlier topic, which tied in quite nicely, Mysterion asked pensively. "These Zeta-tubes. Instantaneous teleportation, right?"

"Y-yeah." Was the shaky reply.

"Okay, then we'll call Zeta beams a rational, scientific, man-made method of teleportation. What you just experienced was the irrational, unscientific, and frighteningly natural method of teleportation. No safety harness, no training wheels, no technology. That's the moonshine to Zeta-beam's white wine." Mysterion explained, opting for some simple metaphors rather than explain the space warping anti-physics that were somehow allowed to exist in the universe.

"So, we've teleported?" Robin asked, trying to push himself to his feet.

"Maybe." Kenny replied, grabbing the boy under his arm and helping him to stand up straight. "I couldn't quite tell. But the principal remains the same. You just moved though means that no man was meant to walk."

"Then how are you still standing?" The Boy Wonder asked, indignant.

"It's never bothered me." Mysterion replied truthfully. "But you did better than most. It gave Batman a spin. Just be glad you had your eyes closed."

"Why?" Robin questioned slowly, evidently not happy about the prospect of his prior journey possibly being any more physically disturbing.

"If you take anything away from this little team-up, Robin. Understand that there are some things our minds aren't capable of dealing with." He replied cryptically.

Looking back at the corner, Robin stared blankly foe a moment, before asking. "Did you close your eyes?"

"Ready to move on?" Kenny asked, ignoring the question.

Robin stared back at Mysterion for a while, before standing up to say. "Let's go."

Slowly moving into the next room, Mysterion made sure to keep an eye out for any lurking enemies, even though this place seemed to be deserted. However, one difference in the room from when he last saw it made Kenny stop dead in his tracks.

Where last night there had been a pool of dark, foreboding water occupying a basin that took up at least half the room. Now there was no liquid, revealing the empty pool, with one large drainage pipe leading away. The hole in the wall which had last night been obscured by the water, was now plain to see, and even plainer to see in the darkness of this room was a light at the end of said tunnel.

"That wasn't there before." Mysterion voiced aloud, his tone wary and heavy with suspicion. Robin stood silently behind him as Kenny cast the flashlight's beam around the room. The stark light cast awkward and gnarled shadows over the walls as it was caught by the various boxes that littered the room. Then it chanced upon that open door,, the one which led to the bedchambers that contained Cthulhu's ghastly image.

Upon checking the room though, Kenny found it empty of the bas relief. Looking back over to Robin, who was searching the other side of the room, Mysterion whispered over to him. "Anything?"

"I don't see anything too strange." The boy said back, before the two reconvened in the middle of the room, their gazes slowly fixing upon the hole in the wall.

It was barely five feet in diameter and would certainly not be a comfortable walk, but at the end there was that tantalising light. Kenny could see it opened at the end into a much vaster space, so with no options left he said to Robin. "I'll go first."

Not putting up an argument, Robin silently fell in behind him as Mysterion stooped down to scurry through the damp and dank pipe. As he drew nearer to the other end he could make out what kind of space this pipeline opened into. A sense of dread crept over him as he reached their objective.

Robin shuffled beside him to where they now perched on a ledge, where the pipe extended out of a wall into the air and just cut off in a sheer drop. The space they were now in was a gigantic well, a cylindrical room which had many pipes the same as the one they were sat in extending into it, each at various heights but all appearing to cut off very abruptly. Then, far below them was the floor. An oval shaped reservoir lurked down there, still and silent ochre liquid resting in this subterranean sewer. The rest of the floor was a flat landing, with a semicircular archway leading into the wall, showing that there was a different way to enter that didn't involve crawling through stinking pipes.

That's when the smell registered with him, and in a deep well of depressed and angry realisation, Kenny uttered. "Oh…"

"What?" Robin whispered back as the metallic stink rose around them, as if encouraged by Mysterion's noticing of it.

"I told you I thought they were planning to sacrifice last nights hostages, right?" He said, voice low and near trembling.

"Yeah." Was Robin's nervous reply, uncertainly awaiting the response.

"Look around…" Mysterion told him, pointing out the various other pipes that emptied into this well. "Four, five, six other pipes feeding into this room. Last night this pipe was filled with water. Dark red, water…"

A horrified idea dawned in Robin's head, and he asked. "You don't mean…"

"Look at that reservoir down there… There's a lot of it, and it sure as shit isn't clean… And I haven't stopped any other cult cells while I've been here…"

Robin turned away, almost choking but valiantly holding his stomach. Mysterion grimaced and grimly ground out. "I can't believe I didn't smell it earlier…"

Robin's eyes bulged beneath his mask, and he took up his perch next to Mysterion again, ranting quietly. "That's sick. That's disgusting. That's-"

"Fucked up." Kenny cut him off, sympathising but needing to keep the Boy Wonder focused. "I know."

"What the fuck were they planning to do?" Robin whispered harshly.

Shaking his head, Mysterion looked down to where the silent waters waited, the empty stone shore beside it. "It doesn't matter, I won't let them succeed."

"We won't…" Robin asserted, before quietly realising. "Oh God, how many people have died already."

Seeing Robin run a shaky hand over his face, Mysterion was reminded of when he'd first found something like this. Cold sweat, an indignant epiphany forcing him to ask how could something like this happen. Assuming that rust coloured water was diluted with what they knew in the dark parts of their heart that it was. So Kenny provided the medicine that had been working for him ever since he became such a hopeless pessimist. "Best not to think about it too much, not right now anyway. Be on the lookout, we need to get down there."

The Boy Wonder pushed down any grim thoughts he might've been having and realigned his attention/ Then, after a scarce few moments of waiting, as unbeknownst to the heroes the clock ticked over into the next day, Robin spotted something. "Look over by that opening, something's moving."

He was right, down on the floor far below them, a number of figures were emerging from the archway's darkness. Leading the way was a large man, Mysterion couldn't tell how tall he was exactly, but he stood head and shoulders above the rest of the group nonetheless. Trailing behind him was a young girl, perhaps no older than Robin, and although she was not bound it was clear she did not want to be there. Her head hung low, bedraggled dark violet hair hanging over her downtrodden face, her feet dragged, and the sparse clothing she wore was tattered and nondescript. While every other person present was dressed heavily in either robes, or some sort of dark wrappings that covered them completely.

Along with the two were a contingent of the beige and cyan robed cultists, their asymmetrically coloured uniforms stinging the eye with their garishness. Then there were a smaller number of the black clad individuals, each wearing a sword at their hip, and with nought but their eyes showing.

Then there was a third figure who stood out from the rest. They were tall and broad shouldered, dressed in mostly black apart from one glaring, colourful cape and hood hanging around their shoulders. Reminiscent of his own cloak and hood, Mysterion couldn't help but narrow his eyes at the golden-yellow colour of it, standing out against the black of the ninja-like sword wielders and the maddeningly coloured cultists.

As gold cloak watched from beneath the shade of their hood, the leader of the troupe strode forward to the edge of the reservoir. There he crouched down to inspect the waters, not touching them, but merely smelling and seeing. Meanwhile the young girl stood behind him, strands of hair obscuring any expression her face might've held.

The leader said something to the assembled cultists, and they immediately took to standing in specific positions. Arranging themselves in a circle, only the robed ones whom Kenny was familiar with taking up these places, while the sword wielders stood around the outer edge. As they did this the gold cloak turned its gaze upwards. Instantly provoking Mysterion and Robin to shrink back into the darkness of their pipe lest they be caught.

As they crouched in hiding, Kenny could almost feel a weight pass over them as the gold cloaked person carried their eyes, if they had them beneath that hood, over the various pipes. After this long perusal though, the figure seemed unaffected, and took a step back from the group, standing off to one side, detached and observant.

Seemingly done with their organising, the cultists all stood perfectly still as their tall, dark skinned leader remained knelt by the waters edge. Mysterion narrowed his eyes as he watched the leader take a long dagger out of his belt, and slowly sink the blade into the water, lifting it up just afterwards and watching the now red steel as it glistened in the low firelight that torches bracketed on the walls provided.

He then pointed at the girl, directing her to stand in the middle of the large circle the cultists had created. But she did not move, prompting the man to stand, and tower himself over the young woman, saying something and once more pointing over to the centre of the circle.

With even more reluctance than she had been showing up until this point, the violet haired girl moved to stand in the middle of the circle. That was when the man moved to stand beside her, placing one large hand on her shoulder and throwing the other wide as if to present this girl to the pool of dark and disgusting water.

Then he called out, in a booming voice. "Great Dreamer! Gla'aki! I beseech you, grant us a sight into the future, give unto us, your grateful friends and rapturous listeners, a means to the greatest of ends! Summoning our father back into this world!"

The words echoed out around the well, their fervent nature however being noticeably marred by a lurking sense of caution and perhaps skepticism, as if he didn't expect whatever it was they were doing to work. "If you hear us not, through the vasty swaths of space that exist between us, then let our powerful sacrifice reach you, so that you might attend to us, your devoted companions!"

"Like shit." Mysterion stated, before snapping an order at Robin as he unclipped his grappling hook. "As soon as you see fireworks, drop in and grab the girl." Then whirling the hook around in a sudden succession of spins, Kenny threw it underarm, up towards the crisscrossing web of smaller pipes on the ceiling.

The grapple looped around the loose collection of piping and pulled taught, then Mysterion dropped off the ledge and let gravity and momentum work their magic.

He fell for a good distance, before the rope swung him out and over the reservoir of dark water, and directly towards his target. A babble of shouts threw themselves up as Mysterion came into the cultists view, but by the time they'd realised he was there, it was too late.

Mysterion let go at the bottom of the swoop, sailing through the air and snatching the glistening dagger out of the central figures hand. He skimmed over the bound girl and came to ground on the other side of the group, rolling across the hard floor and being consumed by the shadows of the archway as momentum carried him into the openings lightless arms.

The swift singing of metal resounded, as the six black-clad warriors drew swords. The towering hulk of a leader bellowed out a cry of intense frustration, while the taller, golden cloaked figure merely stood and watched.

The tension hung in the air for a moment, as none of them acted, waiting for Mysterion to reemerge… But nothing happened.

Then there was a soft click from within the darkness, and a tiny light sparked up. Then several more lights came to life in quick succession. They were very small, and only served to add to the apprehension these cultists now held.

Then a volley of firecrackers were flung out of the shadows, exploding about the heads of the assassin cultists, as a different volley of pellets descended from above. Mysterion's fireworks snapped and cracked, while Robin's smoke bombs expelled their obscuring fog. And the battle commenced.

Heartbeat pounding in his ears, Kenny sprang out of the darkness and into the thick fog. Cloak billowing behind him he approached one hazy shape, and upon reaching it the figure became visible in the dense smoke. A now familiar yellow and cyan robed creature, whirling around in the confusion. Mysterion stealthily slipped around behind it to where he hoped that same silver spiker would be, and made a grab for it.

It was not murder, Kenny tried to tell himself as the barb ripped free. Eliciting a pig like squeal from the abomination. Then as he moved on to the next target he tried to ignore that same question as he severed the thin line that had been tethering these creatures of the cult to this world and their abominable form of life.

Two more of their kind were felled by his hand before he spotted a dark shape fly at him out of the smoke. Ducking down and to the left Mysterion felt the wisp of wind cut by him as a sword sliced through the air, barely missing his throat.

Pushing forward Mysterion drove a fist into the shrouded face of his attacker, knocking them back. Which is when he felt an uncomfortable piercing sensation around his stomach. Looking down Kenny saw a long curved blade, slick with blood, emerging from him, which to any normal person would've been cause for concern, but Kenny simply reached his hands around his back and clasped on to the hilt that was holding this steel in him.

A shocked sound came from within the head wrap of the swordsman who had stabbed him, as Mysterion's dark green gloves closed around his wrists. With a vice like grip Kenny pried the hands from the sword, and then looping one hand back to grab hold of the assailants arm, sword still stuck in his torso, Mysterion threw the man at the enemy on his other side who was struck watching this feat of pain endurance.

The other dodged out of the path of his airborne compatriot, and turned back in time to see Mysterion, clouded by the smoke, unsheathing the sword from his back. Giving it a swift flick to dispel any of his blood that lingered on the blade, he charged at the cultist.

Mysterion brought the blade down in an overhead strike, which was blocked swiftly by his opponent. Then he followed it up with a diagonal slice aiming to cut from should to hip, but that too was deftly parried away.

"She's safe! Mysterion get out of there!" Robin's voice came echoing down to him loud and clear, and throwing his sword at the ninja, Kenny sprinted out of the slowly dispersing smoke and to the edge of the reservoir, where he could see his grapple's rope dangling down, it's end suspended just above the waters. Glancing up he saw Robin clambering into the pipe they had entered from, the young girl already standing inside it.

Taking a moment to sink down into a lunge, Mysterion leapt out over the water and grabbed for his rope. His feet skimmed the surface as he wrapped himself around the line and as quickly as he could, started to haul himself up it.

He could hear the cultists scrambling around in the fog still, and Mysterion only dared to look back when he was halfway up his speedy climb. There he saw at the edge of the water, that golden cloaked figure, holding the leader by the throat in one hand, while in the other he clutched the knife Kenny had previously knocked from the bosses hand.

With one brutal motion, and a deep rumbling utterance of sounds, the golden cloaked figure plunged to dagger into the leaders neck. "Ya uln Gla'aki." Spoke the killer, in a voice like distant thunder. Then in a swift motion, he lifted the gurgling, dying man aloft, and dropped him into the great pool of thick, stinking liquid.

Mysterion watched this unfold beneath him, and as the body disappeared out of sight, the golden cloak turned its hood up to meet his own gaze. The two locked silent stares for a moment, before the golden individual stepped back into the smoke, and off towards the exit.

Kenny wasted no more time, and scaled the rope as fast as he could. Meanwhile red waters began to boil and bubble far below him, yet he reached the top of his climb in short order.

Now he was presented with a new problem, the pipe was a good fifteen feet away from him, and the web of piping he'd attached the hook to did not seem like feasible bars to grab onto. Seeing Robin and the girl waiting for him inside the opening, Kenny started to swing his legs, using his momentum to build up a swing in order to throw himself over the gap.

As he picked up momentum, Mysterion was all too aware of the indecipherable chanting that the cultists had started up down below, and of the drowned rumblings that came from beneath the water.

"I'm not, going to die, this time." Kenny growled under his breath, glaring out from under his hood at the landing he needed to make. Then with a heave he jumped off of the rope and sailed through the air.

His face fell when he realised he wouldn't make it. "Ah shit." Were the plainly disappointed words that slipped out of his mouth as he drew just a scratch too short of the ledge.

Then his fingers grazed the lip of the pipe, and a smaller hand than his own closed around his wrist. Followed by a small shout of pain from the Boy Wonder who had just grabbed on to hold him up. In a split second Kenny's other hand grabbed the ledge with a solid grip, to more than anything alleviate the pain of the kid who had just been momentarily holding his heavy weight up.

Mysterion dragged himself into the pipe to see Robin leant against one side, rubbing his should in pain. Meanwhile the girl they had just absconded with was stood awkwardly on the other side, her furtive eyes glancing from Robin to himself.

"We need to get the-" Interrupting his sentence was the sound of that distant, submerged roar, which just then broke through the waters and became so loud Kenny could barely think for a moment. "Fuck out of here!" He finished as the unidentifiable cacophony reverberated through every part of the sewer.

Robin took off ahead, while Mysterion brought up the rear, urging the as of yet silent girl onwards as he did so. They hurried through the pipe and emerged into the lightless chamber on the other side.

Looking back down the pipe Kenny saw nothing, but still he could hear that sound, the echo of a bellow that never diminished, shaking his skeleton in his skin and trembling the blood in his veins. "Keep going." He urged, moving them onwards.

Then into the corridor they went, Robin grimacing as he closed his eyes and dove through the invisible pathway. Mysterion placed a hand on the confused young girl's shoulder, and spoke in an urgent tone too rushed to bother trying to sound comforting. "Close your eyes and walk through that corner. Keep 'em closed until I say so, okay?"

She nodded in the darkness and did as he said. Sparing only a glance back to make sure they weren't followed, Kenny frowned deeply upon hearing the telltale sound of cracking and crumbling stone. Then he followed after the others.

He stepped out to see Robin leaning heavily against the wall once more, while the girl sat against said same wall looking similarly worse for wear. "It's alright." He told them. "We're not home free yet, but we're better off on this side."

Pulling out his flashlight, Mysterion flicked it on to provide both him and the nameless girl some much needed light. In doing so he illuminated the wide eyed, ashen skinned face of the girl herself, who sat, trembling against the cold stone wall. "You alright?" Kenny asked tentatively, and for lack of any more pertinent questions.

In response she shook her head, and told him in a quiet, whisper of a voice. "I didn't close my eyes."

Mysterion's face fell, along with it he crouched down before the huddled girl and spoke in an assured, comforting tone. The tone of voice he used to speak to Karen all those years ago, when Mysterion still availed the nights of South Park, Colorado. "Hey. What's you name?"

"Raven."

"Raven, listen to me. Whatever you saw in there, it can't hurt you now, not so long as I am here." With his words her eyes lifted to meet his own, and looking simultaneously afraid and confused she asked.

"Who even are you?"

Kenny smiled warmly, and gave the answer. "I am Mysterion, and we are getting you out of here." Taking her hand Kenny helped Raven to her feet, supporting her there as she stood on shaky legs after the ordeal she had just been through. Even through his gloves he could feel how cold she was, not surprising however seeing as she was dressed only in a dirty black leotard, and a fraying cardigan that was missing its buttons and whose thin wool was too big for her small frame.

In a short moment Mysterion had unclasped the cloak from his shoulders and pulled it off hood and all. "Here, wear this." He said, holding out the large blanket like cape to her, now with only a half mask obscuring his face, leaving a few strands of dirty blonde hair poking out where the black mask was tied at his nape. He did feel a little naked without that cloak, standing there in only his combat pants and dirty grey long-sleeved shirt, the dirty green M painted clumsily on its front. But better him than her, Kenny reflected as the ashen skinned young girl took his cloak, wrapping it around her diminutive form and pulling the hood over her head. It was too large for her, but that only served to warm her up faster, the purple fabric enveloping her almost completely, the hood casting a deep shadow over her face, where only the vaguest peep of violet eyes could be seen from within.

"Robin, try and contact Batman. Let's get moving." He finalised before motioning their little group out of the hallway.

As they exited the door a sound came from behind them, ringing out of the cracks between the doorframe. A terrible sound, like tearing steel and the baying of starving hounds. Then as quick as it had deafened their ears, it vanished into the air, leaving only whispers and distant echoes behind.

Mysterion held up a hand to stop Robin and Raven from doing anything, then he himself pulled the door open a fraction, to see what chaos might be held inside.

Inside was only settling rubble, the hallway having caved in completely, showing nothing of what was had been on the other side, even when he directed his flashlight all across every crevice. Closing the door again, Mysterion let out a sigh of relief. "I don't think they're going to be following us."

"I'll contact Batman then." Robin piped up after a quiet pause, before lifting up his glove and activating some sort of computer.

Rolling his shoulders, Mysterion trudged towards the now sole exit, lighting the way with his flashlight, and saying as he did so. "Alright. Raven, I hope you're ready for a long walk back to the surface."

Following after him, his cape fluttering as she walked, the quiet girl replied. "I'll be glad just to be breathing fresh air."

—?M?—

A long walk later found them at the top of the underground trail and before that flat stone wall. This time he barely had to sense for it, Mysterion just muttered a word of. "Open." And the secret door slid aside for them.

When they were outside in the filthy alleyway and under the black of the night, Robin grappled the nearby rooftop and lifted Raven up with him. Leaving Mysterion, who had lost his grapple line back down in that pit, to navigate his way up the side of the building the old fashioned way, finding footholds and vaulting up the fire escape to the roof. Where he emerged to see Robin immersed in conversation with the Dark Knight himself, while Raven waited for his arrival by the ledge.

Standing beside her it wasn't a second before Batman had addressed him. "Mysterion, watch her while I talk with Robin." Without waiting for a reply, Batman swept over to the other side of the building, his young partner following close behind.

Looking sidelong at Raven, Mysterion saw her hanging her head. "Forget about Batman, guy's a asshole." He told her, eliciting the tiniest of chuckles from the girl. "… A well meaning asshole, I think, but still an asshole." He added briefly.

After that the only sound that passed between them for a long while was the rushing of the air, and the far off sound of cars still roaming the late night come very early morning streets. Then after what seemed like an age, Raven spoke up. "… I saw you get stabbed."

Mysterion could do nothing but let that admittance hang in the chilly air for a while. So she had seen that? "Don't worry about it, I'm fine." He tried to assure her, still not taking his eyes off of the cityscape.

"The sword went right through you…" She stated blankly, turning her head to stare at him from under the hood.

"And I'm fine." He reasserted, blue eyes flicking to the side to pay her his attention.

"Are you?" She persisted gently, the smallest bead of worry climbing into her voice.

"Sure." It was all he could say. He had been stabbed through with a sword, but explaining how he was still standing would only lead down one road. And maybe she would believe him, maybe she had seen some mystical activity, hell, she must have. But the difference with Kenny is he didn't like to talk about it. Too many times he'd tried to explain his curse to people, sometimes he'd even try to play it off as something smaller to lighten the initial shock. More, i'm heavily resistant to pain, rather than outright saying, I can't die… But that had always felt dishonest, even if the lie was of no consequence. He just didn't like to talk about it.

"Okay…" Raven supplied, turning her face away from him and returning to gazing out over the gothic city. "Do you want your cloak back?"

"You keep it." He said as he waved the offer away. "Besides anything else it's cold out tonight."

Raven drew the fabric tighter around herself as it flowed in the wind, and murmured in reply. "Yes, it is."

"Mysterion." Like a lightning strike out of a silent cloud, Batman was suddenly right beside them, having arrived unnoticed. "Robin and I will take Raven here back to a League safe-house, tomorrow night at 10PM you will meet me here and we will discuss the situation as it stands. Does that sound agreeable to you."

Given the Bat's attempt at politeness, all Kenny could do was nod brusquely and say. "It does." As the sun began to approach the horizon, turning the sky from its deadly black and grey, into a light violet hue.

—?M?—?M?—

A/N: Longest chapter yet! I'm a little bit proud per se. This one was in my head from the start, and with it's close we find ourselves at the end of the first story arc which I have been calling in my head 'The Dreamer Beneath Gotham' which I thought was Lovecraftian enough to fit this introductory arc.

I initially hoped to get this done for South Park's 20th, but things got in the way. Anyway, as always, thank you for taking the time to read, follow, favourite, review or whatever you happened to do.

Now I said I'd answer some questions every other chapter, so here we go.

Master of the night Nightmaster000 had some regarding Loretta Inzerillo's role in the story, and the appearance of more South Park characters.

Loretta; Initially she was just a throwaway character, but somehow she grew into something more. And while she won't have a major role in the story, and she will probably not appear again for a while, I do have some plans for her. Unless people really like/dislike her of course, she is after all, a very fickle girl.

More South Park characters; They will appear, but at the beginning here I just wanted to focus a lot more on Kenny and establishing the tone of this story. Because South Park is so god damn funny and ridiculous, I had to put a tap on it. But we've already seen Henrietta appear, and more characters both major and minor will start to drip through.

The always appreciated Elena-chan had a question about ships, to which I will say romance is a wonderful narrative force so it'd be remiss of me not to include it on some level. I'm also an avid shipper so there's that. But y'all can tell me your favourite ships in a review; who would you pair Kenny with and why?


	10. Postmortem commute

Try to remember

Chapter 10: Postmortem commute.

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or Young Justice.

—?M?—?M?—

Blue eyes flashed open to take in the darkened room around him, and Kenny felt both the cold rush of air into his lungs, and the warm bedsheets around him. He awoke from death, and didn't bother to sit up. This time he simply sighed, glanced over to the window where grey early morning light was just peeking through the blinds, and closed his eyes. If there was one thing he needed right now, it was just five more minutes of blissful emptiness.

But sadly, that was not something he could have right now. Glumly rubbing his face with his hands, Kenny thought forward to the trip he'd have to make to restock on guns. A journey that would require a death to get there, then who knows how he'd get back. "Fucks sake." He murmured through his fingers, before smacking his face to wake himself up. Reaching a hand over to the bedside table, he hazily grasped for his phone. Knocking over his alarm clock in the search, Kenny eventually got a hold of it, and brought the mobile to his face to send a text message.

 _To: Ned Gerblansky._

 _Resupply needed. Same place, same time._

Hitting send, Kenny put his phone back down, and proceeded to drag himself out of bed. Whereupon he got ready for the last day of school before summer vacation hit.

Ten minutes later found Kenny lumbering down the stairs into the hall, schoolbag in hand. But when making his way to the kitchen, he was interrupted by his adoptive mother, who called out to him from where she was sat on the couch. "Kenny? Why are you dressed for school?"

That stopped him in his tracks. So he turned to regard her with a confused look on his face. Seeing this, Mrs. Dupuis started and continued. "Oh, you didn't know? The school had to close for the last day, some nasty business involving the gym being destroyed or something. Karen had already made plans with her friends, so I was talking to one of her friends mother's and she said-"

At that point Kenny had to interrupt what was sure to be a long and arduous tangent, to ask. "Wait. So, school is cancelled?"

"Yes." Was her simple answer.

Throwing his hands up in the air, Kenny let out a purely joyful shout of. "Wahoo!" And practically flew back upstairs, where he dived back into his room and flopped down on his bed once more. Within a few minutes he was back in the land of dreams, which was better than nothing for the overworked immortal.

Time ticked by, and when he awoke again, at half past three, Kenny could only lament his sleeping habits, as he got up and prepared for his trip back home. For he still thought of that quiet little mountain town as home, no matter how far away he was from it.

So he began the grim process of setting up his suicidal teleportation. Five minutes later saw the teenager with his head about to poke through a loop of rope that dangled from the metal bar in his closet. Kenny paused. His mind drawn to one little thought that crept up from time to time, it bothered him less frequently now he was older, but this one thought had been with him ever since he realised what his life was… _'This is fucking twisted.'_ And with that, he slipped his head through the noose, and kicked the chair out from under him.

—?M?—

Hands jammed firmly into the pockets of his bright orange parka, Kenny shivered as that familiar South Park chill rushed through the alleyway in which he stood. The rumble of an engine drew his attention to the street, where he saw a rusted, green pick-up truck pulling to a stop. Stepping out of said truck was the form of one of only two people in South Park who were willing to give away this much military hardware.

"Mmm, hey Kenny." The digitised voice of Ned Gerblansky siphoned itself through his electrolarynx, as the one armed Vietnam veteran walked up to meet him.

"Hey, Ned." Kenny greeted his long time gun supplier, nodding amicably at the older man.

"Mmm, how you been?" Ned started up conversationally.

Tilting his head from side to side, indecisively, Kenny answered. "Not too bad. You? How's business."

"Business as usual. I can't complain." Ned replied, before beckoning Kenny to follow him back to the truck.

Following, Kenny and Ned stopped by the back of the vehicle, where Ned reached over into the back of the truck and pulled a large backpack towards them. Subtly opening, Ned showed its contents. A metric shit tonne of handguns rested inside, all were of the same standard make but each one was vastly differing in quality. Some were rusted, some dirty, oily, painted, and so on. But that was good enough for Kenny, who smiled and hefted the bag onto his shoulders, saying. "Thanks, Ned."

Ned shrugged off Kenny's thanks, looking around only briefly before stating conspiratorially. "I've got something special this time, if you're interested."

"Might be. What is it." At Kenny's reply, Ned pulled forwards a rectangular crate, prising open the lid just enough to let light illuminate what was held within. When Kenny's eyes fell upon the contents, they went wide, two awestruck words involuntarily slipping from his mouth.

"Holy shit."

"I couldn't get you real bullets for this baby, too expensive, mmm. But rubber bullets should be fine, right?" Now Kenny didn't know too much about guns. He knew enough to get by, and he knew handguns inside out, them being his most frequently used weapon. But overall his firearm trivia was lacking. But he didn't need to be a gun nut to know that the long barrel and heavy frame of this weapon marked it as some kind of semi automatic machine gun.

"Yeah…" Kenny managed in reply, still taken aback by the ordinance. "That'll be just fine… And these?" His gaze shifted to another collection of oddities occupying the crate.

"Flashbangs and smoke grenades." Ned told him blankly.

"This is… Shit, Ned. Thank you, this is fucking awesome…" Then a reality hit him. "But, its too big to get back. I can't smuggle this on a train."

Wordlessly Ned clicked a few buttons on the new addition to his armoury, shifted a latch or two, and collapsed it down to the size of a laptop computer.

Kenny had to let out a little laugh at the novelty, and convenience of this undoubtedly deadly weapon. He'd fired quite a few guns before, some he was more familiar with than others, but this? It was far more than he should ever need, but who was he to turn down a deal like this? He might live in luxury now, but Kenny was still a poor kid at heart. Anyway, he was moving up in the world now, living in Gotham, cooperating with Batman and Robin. Sooner or later he'd have to face someone who required a little more firepower. Previously when he'd tangled with foes far more powerful than himself he'd rely on either the fallback of not being able to die, underhanded tactics, magic, or other people. But now? He needed another tool in his arsenal, and this gun looked to be an excellent start to that.

"Mmm no need to thank me, anything I can do to help the cause…" Ned said, as Kenny slipped the collapsed assault rifle and accompanying grenades into the backpack. "Just make sure you give 'em hell, soldier."

—?M?—

Standing on the overpass, Kenny wondered why he'd chosen to do this… Why not go the comfortable route back to Gotham? He was fairly sure he could smuggle all his guns and ammo through security. But then again, there was always that chance.

The earsplitting horn of a freight train broke him of his musings, and throwing his cares away, Kenny dropped off the ledge.

The rushing of wind and clattering of metal wheels took him by storm, and then the real impact came. He bounced and smacked against the roof of the freight train he'd dropped on top of, and flinging out both hands he tried grabbing for anything that could hold him. As his body tumbled down the length of the speeding locomotive, his hand caught the rim of a train cars roof, and wasting no time he shot his other hand out to join it.

With a wrenching sensation, and a sudden series of jolts, he held still atop the train. Looking up from where his face had planted into the corrugated metal roof. From under the rat-fur lined hood of his parka he could see the train stretching out before him. Channing a look behind, Kenny saw about four carriages between him and the end of the train. He was safe, and pretty much home free. "All aboard." He mumbled humorously, as the racing wind blasted his exposed face. To his immediate embarrassment, Kenny looked around, as if expecting someone to be there to hear his pun. But of course there was no one, he was alone, clinging to the top of a freight train that was heading straight for Gotham.

Silently thanking Ned for his strange contacts and suspiciously in-depth knowledge of rail bound transport, as well as his willingness to give away guns for free, Kenny crawled down into the space between cars. Nestling atop the uncomfortable coupling, Kenny reflected briefly, and not for the first time, that Ned Gerblansky probably knew what he was up to.

Back when Kenny had broached the subject with his old friend Stan, about perhaps securing him some guns, his long time childhood friend had instantly rejected it. But as luck would have it, Stan must've at least mentioned it to his uncle Jimbo, because as lady luck would have it, not two weeks later did Kenny receive a cryptic message from one Ned Gerblansky.

Stan had obviously grown out of the superhero gig, unlike Kenny who had something keeping him in that lifestyle. But Ned apparently had a spark in him that yearned for justice. It just so happened that it was Kenny's kind of justice, the kind of crime fighting that would better be suited to words such as "death-wish" "revenge" or "vigilantism". A desire to make a change, no matter the means or the cost. A conviction that was perhaps unsurprising in a veteran… Kenny turned these thoughts over in his head as the train carried him onwards. He'd never really spoken to Ned about his time in 'Nam, and Ned had never outright asked why Kenny needed these guns. But it was better that way. It was better that Stan stayed out of it as well. Better…

Kenny looked sidelong out at the passing scenery, snow smothered fields racing by in a flurry. But even at this speed, the journey was going to be long, and by the feel of it, very cold. So Kenny pulled his hood tighter, and settled in for the trip.

—?M?—

Late that night, a figure in a billowing cloak stood atop a skyline that was now becoming very familiar to him. Senses alert for the arrival of the Batman, Mysterion waited, casting his eyes across the intimidating, fog shrouded architectural landscape of Gotham City. Until eventually.

"Mysterion."

The voice, deep and foreboding, sounded from behind him, and turning around the already impatient teenager was greeted by the shadow of Batman, standing in the middle of the rooftop they had taken to occupying, black costume outlined against the midnight sky.

"Batman." Kenny greeted in return, before broaching the subject he assumed the Dark Knight had asked him here to discuss. "What do you want to know."

—?M?—?M?—

A/N: It's a short chapter, I admit, less than 2000 words. But I've been very busy, not to mention this chapter seemed to block me for some reason. I don't know whether that's because it's very much an in-between chapter or what, but either way I felt it was better to put it out and hopefully get over this bump in the road, than to put out a chapter where you could cut out half the words and be left with something that was no different. This chapter also had one or two rewrites/drafts, one of which included some of the South Park boys. But introducing them now with no fanfare or build up just didn't flow right. I will get to the boys (and girls) eventually, trust me, and when I do, you'll know. But for now I want to give some love to some of South Park's awesome side characters.

So yeah, sorry for the wait might as well be my mantra but I'll say it anyway. Sorry. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read, and if you feel so inclined, follow, favourite and review. Oh and I'll answer some review questions next chapter; thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far, I love reading them.


	11. An Arcane Consultation

Try to remember

Chapter 11: An Arcane Consultation

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or Young Justice

—?M?—

"The girl is reluctant to tell us what transpired." Was the Dark Knight's opening gambit, stony and serious as the last time Mysterion had seen him. "Either she does not know or is trying to hide it. As for Robin, he lacks the context to understand what he saw. I want you to tell me exactly what happened, and for you to talk to Raven, find out what she knows."

Kenny was annoyed at the seeming lack of any questioning inflection to Batman's tone. Which made sense he supposed, with a begrudging sense of respect for the older vigilante. You didn't get to be The Batman by being polite. But by the same token, he didn't get to be Mysterion by playing nice either. "So what, you want me to interrogate a little girl for you?" He snipped, cutting to the root of what he was being asked.

"You know that isn't what I meant." Was the answer, equally clipped and curt in tone. "She's asked about you several times, she'll talk to you." He added more reasonably.

"And then you think I'll share what she tells me with you?" Mysterion crossed his arms over the haphazard M emblazoned on his chest, squaring up to the assumption, and the prospect of an insidious interrogation. One where the subject was unaware they were being grilled for information, and one whose concept did not thrill him.

"I would hope so."

After a short pause, a moment in which he weighed up the pros and cons of going with the Caped Crusader, Kenny replied ambiguously. "… We'll see…" Before uncrossing his arms and saying. "Fine. Where are we going."

"Manhattan."

The two remained in silence as they traversed the city, eventually coming to a back alley whose only barely notable occupant was an inconspicuous phone booth. Initially perplexed, Mysterion was soon enlightened to what the Boy Wonder had told him before, as Batman briefly explained that this was an incognito Zeta Beam teleportation device.

Stepping in and speaking aloud a code Batman had given him, into the receiver, Mysterion saw only a bright white light, before it dimmed and he saw that the piss stained, out-of-use phone booth in downtown Gotham had been replaced. By a different piss stained, out-of-use phone booth, only now it was one on the outskirts of New York City.

It was strenuous work, keeping up with Batman as they traversed the urban landscape. But after a while they emerged from the elaborate high-rise jungle, and into a neighbourhood where the buildings were lower.

They brought their travels to a stop, as Mysterion followed Batman down to the backdoor of a simple house, one that looked hardly out of place with the rest of the are. If was not for the two caped vigilantes waiting at the back door. When Batman stepped up to the door, the shadowy crusader, who had been nigh invisible amidst the swarms of shadows, became instantly illuminated by a light which blinked to life as their motion triggered it.

Giving a precise set of knocks, Batman didn't glance back to Mysterion as the door swiftly opened to reveal a rather gentlemanly fellow standing within the home. Not at the door, for the moustachioed man was stood inside behind a kitchen table. But the question as to how the door had opened was quickly answered as Batman strode in, Mysterion following behind him, when the formally dressed occupant of this rather mundane kitchen spoke.

"So you are Mysterion. Good evening, I am Zatara." The house they were in could not have been more homely. The whole kitchen screamed of upper middle class niceness, a style of decor that Kenny had never been comfortable in for some reason. Yet the Justice League's man of magic himself was smiling quietly at him, as the two new visitors to Zatara's home positioned themselves across the table from him.

"Hello…" He answered, not worrying about any pleasantries. If Batman had brought him here, brought Raven here, then Zatara probably knew a great deal all ready, so introductions would've been pointless. Instead Mysterion cast his eyes around the room, seeing the plates and cutlery sat drying by the sink, condiments still sat on the table, and a black cat prowling around on the kitchen counter behind the famed hero and magician.

"So… Batman tells me you are versed in the arcane?" Zatara asked politely, trying to start up conversation that would lead them to the matter at hand, and likely learn more about Mysterion in general. Kenny regretted the fact that he had not given much forethought to what he would actually tell them about himself, and moreover, about his purpose. Certain things needed to stay secret, of course. While other secrets would not let themselves be told at all. And so Mysterion simply grumbled a sarcastic response.

"Does he now…"

The moustachioed mage shot a surreptitious look at Batman, slightly quirking one eyebrow. Body language Mysterion didn't pay any mind to, being too busy worrying about how much he should disclose to them. "May I ask how you came to learn of such arts?" Zatara questioned gently, if slightly suspiciously.

Here was where the talking really started, Mysterion thought wryly, and answered blankly. "… I grew up in a place that… I grew up in a strange place…" He absolutely would not call what he knew arts, art implied beauty, but Zatara didn't need to hear that.

"I see… Are you a practitioner of magic by any chance?" The inquiry elicited a noncommittal shrug from him. He never made a habit of using magic, the kind of magic he encountered struck him as a slippery slope, one he should stay away from. Not that he was a natural, but some 'spells' didn't require wands or rituals or magic mojo or whatever, some of them 'were just words'.

"Not a practitioner, no. More of an observer."

Batman cut into the conversation like a knife, getting to the point faster than the two mystics were willing to. "Shall we get down to business."

"Indeed." Zatara nodded, gesturing to a chair at the dining table. "Mysterion, please, take a seat. And tell us, if you will, what you saw in that sewer system." As he said this, Zatara himself took a seat, while Batman remained standing.

Mysterion slowly approached the table, placing a hand on the back of the wooden chair across from Zatara. He did not however, sit down. Something about the image of three superheroes sat around a dinner table just seemed surreal, which was maybe why the Bat remained standing.

"… Old magic…" He finally began, looking between the two heroes. Vague terms might be best he had decided, if he fed them small morels of information hopefully that would satisfy them until he knew they could be trusted. All he needed to do was give them enough details to seem forthcoming, and to let him speak with Raven. "It was, rough, unclean, no effort was put into the design. But a lot of effort was put into their summoning ritual. That's where we found Raven. She was some sort of catalyst, a key sacrifice… They'd killed, I don't know how many people already. All to get the attention of, well, something old."

"A demon, perhaps." Zatara mused, leaning back in his chair.

Shaking his head Mysterion replied. "No, I know what they were summoning. It wasn't a demon…" Not that the difference mattered too much, at least Kenny didn't think so. Demons weren't exactly something he had encountered before. Henrietta had mentioned them, but then again, that was Henrietta. "… How much d'you know about, old gods."

To his surprise Zatara answered quickly. "Which pantheon?" Although the answer didn't seem to be following the right line.

"No… Old ones." Mysterion levelled Zatara with a pointed stare. If the man knew what he meant, then the two words alone would speak for themselves.

A reserved look came over the middle aged man's face, as he seemed to think deeply for a moment. Perhaps trying to remember something. Either way, Kenny had seen the comprehension, whether it was deep or shallow didn't matter. "… Continue…"

"I heard their leader shouting the summons." He took in a deep breath and sighed, now he was coming to the real crux of the matter. "They were looking for information, a way to summon something else. But whatever it was they needed to know, couldn't be found, so they turned to something that would know…"

"This is troubling. They were willing to kill so many just to get information… Can you describe the creature they were contacting?"

"No. Knowledge is power, Zatara. Power for them. I won't pretend to know what this old one's nature is, but I can't risk letting you know too much. But if you let me talk to Raven, I might be able to let you know more about them…"

Zatara looked over to Batman, who had been staring at Mysterion the whole time they spoke. Catching each others eye, the two League members nodded, and Zatara made a wide accepting gesture with his hands and said. "Very well. Head up the stairs, it's the first door on your right. Knock first."

—?M?—

As Mysterion left the room and the door swung shut behind him, Zatara turned to Batman, his dark eyes subdued and serious. "Batman, I have only heard the term Old Ones mentioned by a few individuals. I know next to nothing about whatever they are, but those who I hear speak the term are not usually the most reputable."

"Names I would know?" The Dark Knight inquired, turning his head to briefly watch the door Mysterion had left through. Thoughts and theories clearly formulating and contemplating beneath the cowl.

"John Constantine. Jason Blood, even Kent Nelson…" The Magician listed slowly. "They speak of them either in passing, in fear, or in some drunken half-rant, but whenever I hear the term mentioned it is always with trepidation… Batman, the fact that these Old Ones have been called upon in Gotham means nothing good. Neither does the fact that this mystery boy seems to be very familiar with them…" Rubbing his temples in thought, Zatara gave little thought to the Bat's next question.

"Do you think he can be trusted?"

"I think it can't hurt to keep a close eye on him… I can't put my finger on it, but there is something inherently strange about that boy." The man was clearly vexed, but without outright casting spells on the boy there was little he could do.

"I had intended to introduce him to the team. Would you advise against that?" Batman spoke steadily, as he sought the mages opinion on the matter.

"The Team again? It's your call Batman but… Don't you think you're throwing too many temperamental teenagers together on this team? Next thing you'll be asking me if Zatanna…" Zatara saw no change in the Batman, but he could feel a shift in the mood. His mind drew lines between dots and jumped to the conclusion. "No… Batman, don't even think about it!"

—?M?—

The floorboards creaked nervously as Mysterion made his way along the upstairs corridor, stopping at the first door on the right and knocking twice. Shortly thereafter the door edged open to reveal a dark haired girl in what looked like some sort of evening wear. She seemed surprised to find him behind the door, but smirking realisation soon dawned behind her dim blue eyes. "You must be Mysterion. Do the adults want us downstairs then?"

"They do not. I'd like to talk to Raven though." He replied politely, being as he was, a strangely dressed stranger in this teenage girl's house, even if her father was a renowned magician and superhero.

"Oh." Her shoulders sagged and she seemed quite a bit disappointed at that, but stepped aside and bid him. "Well come on in then." Despite whatever she had been hoping would happen. Perhaps to be part of a discussion with two members of the Justice League on a matter of some importance? She was Zatara's daughter after all, maybe she wanted the same kind of heroic lifestyle for herself? But Kenny wiped the musings from his mind as he nodded in thanks to the girl, and stepped into her room.

What he saw within the dimly lit bedroom was not dissimilar to what Henrietta's room looked like. Everything from the shelves of books and heavy drapes, to the candle strewn old wooden desk could tell him what kind of person Zatanna Zatara was. But he wasn't here to pry. Only to talk with the other young girl who sat cross legged on Zatanna's bed, still wearing his overlarge cloak, but now dressed in some proper clothes beneath that. A purple shirt and black jeans were what Raven now sported, as her eyes found his own when Zatanna moved aside to allow him in.

Raven did not smile, but her expression was by no means cold or unwelcoming. She appeared solemnly serene than expressionless however, and inclined her head to him as their eyes met, saying as she did so. "Hello, Mysterion."

Immediately Kenny knew he wanted to help this girl, because everything from her silent demeanour to her haircut reminded him of someone. The differences were there, certainly, but she reminded him of Karen. "Raven." He answered, giving a slight smile, before noticing that Zatanna was still standing right next to him, looking between the two of them curiously. Shooting her an awkward glance, he coughed lightly before edging. "Could i speak to her privately?"

For a brief moment the girl looked mildly affronted, before she exchanged glances with Raven, who nodded at her while muttering. "It's alright." Which seemed to cause the older magician's daughter to back away and out of the room, leaving the two purple cloaked characters inside.

However, Myterion did hear her grouse quietly as she left. "Kick me outta my room why don't ya." Which made him smile a little more in amusement, turning his head to look back at Raven as the door clicked shut behind him.

"… How're you holding up?" He asked the young girl, after a brief awkward silence. Wherein Raven stared at him intently, her dismantling gaze making him equal parts uncomfortable and annoyed.

Seeming to shake her intense staring off, Raven answered quietly. "I'm well, thank you for visiting."

"How've they been treating you." Mysterion queried, not wanting to storm right into the topic they both knew was waiting for their attention.

"They are kinder than anything I have ever met." The blunt, monotone reply shocked him slightly, but he made no show of finding it unusual. The girl was speaking as if the concept of kindness itself was unfamiliar to her, yet there was still something about hr that Kenny could not pin down. The use of the term anything as opposed to anyone did not go unnoticed by him either.

"That's really good to hear…" He nodded, smiling in spite of the myriad of questions her odd response had stirred up in him. "They want me to ask you, about what happened…"

Raven shifted her gaze, looking down at her hands. One might think she looked almost bashful, except her expression did not once deviate from its sternly controlled emotionlessness. "I wasn't sure what to tell them. They are kind, but people are untrustworthy."

"Not all of them." Mysterion answered comfortingly, loosening his gravelly voice a notch, his tone becoming more comforting. The kind of voice he used to speak to Karen with, whenever she had need of her guardian angel.

"I still didn't know, so when they told me you were to come and speak with me, I decided to ask you, and maybe tell you." Her expressionless voice had picked up pace slightly, her brow creasing in nervousness, even though the very act of showing such seemed to cause her some sort of annoyance.

"Why me?" Kenny asked gently, curious but anxious for what the answer might be.

"Because we are alike." As she said this Raven met his gaze, and as opposed to the cold eyes that had greeted him when he entered the room, Kenny now saw the eyes of a very scared young girl.

"In what way?" As he replied, Mysterion caught a glimpse of the bedroom's oaken desk in the periphery of his vision. Sat upon it were a few books and trinkets, as well as a framed picture of Zatara, his daughter and a woman to whom the teenage girl bore some resemblance. But these are not the things which drew Mysteriou's attention. It was the ethereal black glow coating them, holding the objects in a trembling, levitating grip, washing over the items like oily gas. He could feel it as well. This energy, whatever it was, strung out from Raven and worked itself upon the ambient area of the room. This wasn't magic, not exactly, if it was he wouldn't be able to sense it so plainly. But its outer-dimensionality almost cried out to him, the energy was bathed in feeling, in power, in something not of this world. Kenny could almost smell it.

"Neither of us are completely human…" Raven stated, noticing to where his eyes had been drawn and taking in a sharp breath. Seizing hold of her slipping emotions the dark haired girl brought this power back under control, and the levitating objects dropped back onto the desk.

It was clear that she was not as she said, but him? How had she determined that. "… What makes you say I'm not human…"

"I don't know. A few things…" She started, straightening her back and realigning her meditative pose. "I can't feel your emotions… it is, disquieting."

"You feel other peoples emotions?" To him that sounded unpleasant for anyone to be able to experience, but that she could not sense him certainly was an interesting point. Though maybe not entirely unexpected…

"Yes. I do many things normal humans cannot." She nodded dimly, violet eyes flicking over to where the previously airborne objects now sat, only slightly out of place.

"Yeah… I can tell… Where d'you come from, Raven?" Mysterion started along a different line, coming at the conversation anew and taking a seat by Raven on the side of the bed.

She shifted uncomfortably and answered shortly. "Another place."

"Well I could've told you that." Kenny said, smirking.

Raven looked away at the door to the room, maybe amused by his sarcasm, maybe not. "… If I tell you, will you keep it secret from them? If they knew, I don't think they would be so kind to me…"

"I will, trust me. i'm good at keeping secrets." As long as she relied on him or even called him a friend, that was the least Kenny felt he could do.

"I am from another dimension, a place called Azarath."

He met her statement not with alarm or suspicion or doubtfulness, but with concern, following the information he already had. "Why did those people bring you here?"

"The leader of them, my brother, was going to use me in a ritual to summon a powerful being." Between anyone else, maybe outside of certain members of the justice League this conversation would ring the church bells of lunacy, but not here.

"Your brother the one in the gold cloak?" Mysterion asked. The sheer presence of that figure in particular had stayed with him, even though what they had personally done wasn't exactly cosmically apocryphal.

"No, I do not know who he was. My brother was the one who was sacrificed instead of me." Raven answered, the cadence of her voice not showing clear emotion but flowing in such a way that she sounded at least relieved to be finally talking about this to someone who could do something.

"I see…Raven, I need to know what the ritual was meant to do, how you arrived here from your home dimension, and who you are." The three questions were simply put, but if Kenny's experiences were anything to go by, their answers would be anything but.

"I only know the ritual was meant to bring my brother the knowledge he needed to create a different ritual, one capable of summoning my father into this dimension. A cabal of the Church of Blood sent me here against my will by magic. And I am Raven, only daughter of Trigon the Terrible…"

Her matter-of-fact nature of answering took him aback for a second, not least of all because of what the information implied. "… Fuck… That's a lot to take in… Concise though, thanks. Most people I talk to about this kind of stuff don't seem to know when to shut up."

She shook her head at his more casual response, dark lilac strands of hair shifting across her placid brow. "What will you tell Batman and Zatara?"

Again Mysterion took a moment to think. He probably had a hundred questions he could ask, but Raven didn't seem like she had much on the how of matters, which was what concerned him more than the why of matters. The why was almost self evident. Thinking back to her question though, what would he tell the two heroes downstairs. "…Whatever you want me to. Although, i'd maybe advise letting them know sooner rather than later… I'm guessing your father coming into our dimension wouldn't be the best, right?"

"How do you think they would react. What would they do." Raven's intention was clear, even if her voice betrayed little and her small features even less.

"Worried?" Mysterion returned, attempting to remain reassuring.

After a short pause, wherein she looked forlornly around the room, Raven replied. "… Yes. I like it here, on Earth as well as with this family. I don't want to see anything happen to it."

Swallowing his pride, and shedding some of the stern and cynical attitude of Mysterion, Kenny told her. "Well I could tell you that they're some of the most noble-ass people on the planet, but I'm guessing they've told you what the Justice League is and what it does? So if I'm honest, you're probably better off trusting them than you are me. They want to help you Raven, so if you can trust me, a guy who you've barely spoken too just because I'm not exactly a traditional human, then you can trust these guys as well. They can help."

"Okay. Thank you, Mysterion." The answer looked to be what she had hoped for, or at least close two it, as she smiled fractionally at him in thanks.

"That's alright." He said, standing once more and getting ready to head back downstairs.

"I forgot to ask. How is your wound?" Her question caught him as he rose, and a little shiver of ice shot through his brain…

"My what?" That was unexpected, to say the least Kenny did not know how to respond. With his usual pokerface resolute, the immortal McKormick tried to remain calm, despite what her memory of his injury implied. Usually… no, always, people always forgot the more crippling injuries. Lost limbs, ruptured organs, partial immolation, the really serious grievances always slipped through the cracks, just like actual deaths themselves. A sword through the chest surely counted as one of those, didn't it?

"You were stabbed though with a sword." Raven prompted, and her tone held the tiniest bead of confusion.

"You… You remember that?" Mysterion asked, voice faltering and flickering to the higher pitched cadence of Kenny McKormick.

"Should i not?" Raven pursued, confusion creeping ever more steadily into her tone.

"I… It's fine, I get over that stuff quickly." Masked voice forgotten, Kenny found an answer for her in his worry and shock.

They locked eyes again, as they had done before they started talking, and a bolt of understanding flashed between them. Nothing concrete, but something that verified Raven's earlier assumption that neither of them were exactly normal. "… This is why we are alike, Mysterion. We are both different."

"Sure are… i'll see you around, Raven." And with that, he slipped out of the door, inclining his head to Zatanna as she hurriedly shifted away from where he was sure she had been eavesdropping. Then descending the stairs of Zatara's darkly lit home, he once more swept into the kitchen, stopping the conversation of the two men as he entered.

The silence was brief, before Mysterion started. "I had a talk with Raven. Told her she should tell you guys the details. For what it's worth I think she will… She's just scared is all."

"And regarding the old ones?" Zatara asked, now standing with a mug of coffee in his hand.

"Where she's coming from sounds more like your wheelhouse. I reckon the cult leader took the stance of go big or go home, and just tried to contact the biggest, ugliest creature he could for help… No surprises what happened to them when you think about it…" Kenny shrugged, taking a step up to the table and trying to marshal his thoughts on the information that had come to light tonight.

"Can you tell me more about these old ones, in the event that-" Zatara was undoubtedly good intentioned, but Kenny really didn't like the idea of sharing his knowledge too widely, especially with those who didn't already have a grasp on it. He was of the mind that it wasn't your problem, until such things made themselves your problem. Until the mythos came crashing through your door, the best thing you could do was live in ignorance. But Zatara being who he was, could maybe be afforded some greater insight.

"I'm gonna stop you there. We can talk about demons and magic all you want, but… Some things aren't meant for us to speak about over kitchen tables… If you ever need to know - and pray you don't - then maybe i'll call the Justice League to give you a heads up. Maybe…" They hadn't been present during the lost gulf crisis, and Kenny doubted they could do much anyway. You can't fist fight the high priest of the sunken nightmare city… But apparently you can send him packing with the power of mint, berries and a tasty satisfying crunch… God damn it, now he was angry. Fucking Mint-Berry Crunch…

"Speaking of contact." Batman interjected at that point, seeing the end of the conversation looming with the stubborn Mysterion. "Take this." The Dark Knight said, handing Kenny a small, gunmetal grey, watch-like wrist device. "Should you need to contact us, or we you, then this communicator will do just that. It's voice activated, and passcode protected. Your code is simply 'Mysterion; A-zero-three.' That code will also allow you limited access to the League's zeta-tubes."

Mysterion slowly took the device, looking at it long and hard before he finally arrived at a conclusion. "… If I find out that you haveve been tracking me with this. Then I swear, i will shoot you in the dick… But thanks."

—?M?—

A/N: Here we are! Longer chapter to make up for the wait, and one with a lot of dialogue to boot. I'll answer a few review questions down below, but apart from that, thank you for taking the time to read, I hope you enjoyed it.

As opposed to answering specific questions, I'll just ramble for a bit and try to cover stuff I saw asked.

The new South Park game, the fracture but whole. I'll try and release a chapter to mark the occasion, but it keeps getting delayed! That's something this story and that game have in common I guess. Although the trailer for that game, where the boys outline their plans for a cinematic universe, is absolutely amazing.

A bunch of questions I won't answer because they will reveal themselves through the course of the story.

My favourite Kenny death is (I can't recall the exact episode) but he goes the whole episode without dying, then right at the end some pterodactyl monster just bursts in through the school roof and apropos of nothing, picks him up, throws him around, then just leaves, roll credits. Very random, very surreal, very South Park.

Mysterion will meet the Team soon, and we can actually make this more of a Young Justice crossover. Soon… soon~

With regards to which versions of characters I'm using; think of any character who isn't shown in Young Justice and who is from the DC multiverse, as a version unique to this story. I.e I'm not specifically going to use cartoon Teen Titans Raven, or Young Justice Joker. Instead they'll likely be a combination of versions of that character that I'm familiar with and that are appropriate for this story. So expect some canon deviations even for characters in YJ canon. This is a crossover in that it is a melding of the South Park, YJ and H.P.L materials. Like a tasty fiction stew, and each chapter is a nice slice of bread, yum!

The waits between chapters hurt me, physically and metaphysically. I do try to get them out though, it's just stuff gets in the way. I don't have plans to discontinue this though, I've got a - dare I say - shocking amount planned. It's daunting for me, but I'm excited for what lies ahead.

If it vindicates Elena-chan at all, I will say that I can also picture a Mysterion/RedArrow ship. However slash is not the way this story will be going. I won't say there won't be same-sex pairings at all, but I doubt it'll involve Kenny or Mysterion.

That's enough questions for one chapter, if you read the whole author's note as well as the chapter itself, thank you even more so! Till next time - Faff


	12. Acceptance

Try to Remember

Chapter 12: Acceptance

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the fictional material used in this crossover.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

It would be a week before Kenny heard from Batman again, and when he did receive the call it was at the beginning of a night of patrol. The midsummer air was warm, and night had barely fallen as the crescent moon oozed gently over jagged horizon of Gotham's lower east side. When his communicator beeped softly, Kenny had to fiddle around with the wrist device a few times before it seemed to receive the call.

 _"Batman to Mysterion."_ The Dark Knight's voice came through the small speaker, quiet and slightly distorted.

"This is Mysterion." Kenny replied, pausing atop a water tower to take the call, cape whipping around him as he stood there, wrist held before his face, glaring out over the nightscape.

 _"I have a mission for you."_ The Bat continued, voice making what could have been an offer sound implicitly obligatory.

"What is it?" Returned Mysterion, still scanning both the close and the distant skyline for any signs of trouble, though still curiously wondering what this 'mission' could be.

 _"Do you recognise the name 'Kent Nelson'."_ Batman's voice shifted on the other end of the line, faint electronic sounds audible in the background.

Kenny wracked his brain for any threads of familiarity connected to that name. A fraction of a memory unravelled, of him and Henrietta late one night, pouring over the yellowed pages of that ancient and dangerous book. Kent Nelson was someone she had mentioned in passing, with regard to her increased interest in 'normie magic' as she had called it. If Kenny remembered rightly he held some important title or other.. "Heard it before, yeah. Sorcerer Supreme, right? What about him."

 _"Nelson has been missing for over three weeks and the League is considering sending someone to look for him."_ Batman informed him, continuing without pausing to question how Mysterion knew of the man. Kenny suspected the Dark Knight thought he knew more than he actually did, which was true, but only in some areas.

Nevertheless, Mysterion immediately recognised what the older hero's 'mission' for him was. "Right…"

Clearly _a_ ssuming Mysterion knew what he meant, the Dark knight elaborated. _"He lives in Salem, Massachusetts. You can take a zeta-tube there and see what you find. Consider it a test."_

"A test of what…?" Kenny could hazard a few guesses at what the answer might be, but the nature of this test straight from the Bat's mouth would be far more convenient… Yet there was no reply. "… Hello…?" Dropping his hand Mysterion steeled his gaze out over the city, thoughts far less composed than his outward appearance would suggest. Murmuring under his breath he descended from the perch, and headed for that same piss-stained phone booth. "Son of a bitch hung up on me. Great, goodbye quiet night, hello bullshit old-manhunt."

—?M?—

"Mysterion, A-Zero-Three… Salem." No sooner had he spoken did the white light engulf him, flashing like the bulb of an old camera, and whisking him away to somewhere else. In just as quick of an instant, the light peeled back to reveal a different alleyway; his destination.

But immediately as he arrived something struck him, it was like a tremor in the Earth, or even more, like someone had swept a carpet out from under his feet. It was a level of reaction in his eldritch sense that he had only ever gotten a handful of times before in his life. As he stilled from the sudden awareness, Kenny grimaced; this was probably very bad news.

Before he could think to hard about this though, Mysterion needed to get somewhere less visible. He wasn't too fond of civilians seeing him, at least getting a good enough look to realise he wa dressed far less extravagantly than your average hero. Maybe extravagant wasn't the term, but he certainly didn't look as professional as any other hero he'd seen. Which was fine, after all, he wasn't really like many other heroes.

Ten minutes later saw Kenny catching his breath on top of an old colonial era hall, within sight of the harbour power station but still close enough to hear the noise of cars on the main road. Going from the never sleeping always shouting Gotham, to here was a bit of a shock. Perhaps since he'd made the journey in so little time, but given the overall look of the city it didn't strike him as too different from Gotham. The buildings were lower, the roads far wider, and there was a lot more greenery around. It was a different kind of city to Gotham, and Kenny wasn't quite sure if he preferred it or not. But then he slid his mind out of ordinary perception and he made his decision.

Magic flooded this place, hanging in the air like background radiation. If it was a sound it would've been akin to the ring of a tuning fork that has just been struck. The whole city thrummed with power, and it seemed to be coming from one specific place. All Mysterion needed to do now was follow that sensation and he would hopefully find some clues to Kent Nelson. Although given the power he was experiencing here, Kent Nelson took a back seat to his own curiosity.

The nexus of this power revealed itself to be

Gallows Hill Park, a wide open span of grass that seemed far too empty for Mysterion's liking. Even at this time of night there were usually one or two people in the park; joggers on a midnight run, homeless people, drug dealers, or just delinquents. Even birds and rodents seemed to be steering clear of this place. The desolation, coupled with these feelings of electric uneasiness set Kenny's nerves on edge. So, for lack of any better hiding places, he lowered himself to street level and headed across the road into the park.

To an outside observer it would look like a large but scrupulous cat slid out of the darkness and moved, shadow to shadow across the street. A travelling shape, Mysterion sank into each shadow softly, appearing only as a dark lump the few times he passed under a streetlamp's glow. He felt that subconscious desire to keep out of sight, if at all, there was anyone's sight to keep out of. Perhaps he was being overly paranoid, but when the hairs on the back of his neck tingled so, Kenny would rather be safe than dead.

In Gallows Hill there was almost no light, the only aids to visibility were the few infrequent lampposts that lit the walking paths, and of course the moon. Mysterion stayed off the beaten path, coasting the edge of the orange lamp glow. But here, with seemingly no one around he stopped moving with the stooped, hurried gait of someone who need not be seen, and started walking cautiously, the steady, tentative strides of someone who was looking for something. Something that could not be seen with the naked eye.

To search like this, fully using whatever sixth sense he had, was a peculiar thing. If his mind was a car he would be changing gears constantly, if his mind was a boat he would be repeatedly hoisting and drawing down the sail, if his mind was anything he could make sense of he wouldn't have to think in such metaphors. But that was the level he had to sense on, something beyond normal physical bounds, something that was hidden within his own mind, hidden even from himself. It was that part of him that made people forget, that part of him that could exist as easily on eldritch planes as a fish could live in the ocean. It was alarming how natural it felt, sensing this way.

All his other sense became slightly distorted as Kenny shifted his mind into that secret form; the air smelled sweeter, the keen scent of pollen and garbage. The air tasted sweet too, and thick as if he were breathing in smoke. Over the backdrop of silence in the park, he could pick up the sound of his heart thudding, his blood flowing, his feet squashing the grass beneath him. And when he looked, Kenny saw; darkness did not illuminate but became easier to see through, depth was somehow deeper, like shapes were now bordering the farthest edges of three dimensions, it was exceedingly peculiar. But through it all Mysterion could see something up ahead, standing tall in the middle of a clearing, away from the path. A great tower. And though he could see it was there, Kenny could not quite focus on it, as if the tower itself was an over exposed polaroid picture of the real thing. So he moved closer.

Fully aware that he was probably (on the back of whatever powers he had) reaching through dimensions, Mysterion stretched out with his gloved hands and pressed his palms to the tower. At that moment he seemed to tune into the wavelengths that this tower was existing on, and the rough beige bricks became clearly visible to him. It was nothing remarkable as towers go, bar the fact that it was folded into a different part of reality, but there was a door, with a handle.

Taking the next logical step, Kenny turned the handle and tried to open the door. It remained shut, but somehow that did not stop him from moving through the dark oak door and into the tower. He moved through it as if the tower were made of flowing liquid, the seemingly solid door warping over his skin and swallowing him in, returning to its form behind him as from the outside the tower once more became invisible, leaving no trace that anyone or anything had just been there.

—?M?—

Mysterion stood frozen on the other side of the door, blinking in deftly concealed alarm. _'That was a little… more, than usual.'_ He mused to himself, before a rich elderly voice stopped his thoughts from spiralling into questions.

"Greetings, you have entered without a key and the tower does not recognise you. I'm impressed. Nevertheless, you have thirteen seconds to state your name and business." Before him was standing a shimmering simulacrum of light, the figure of an old man in a suit leaning on a cane.

Not wanting to find out what would happen after thirteen seconds, Kenny produced an answer, not a stammer or stutter in there. Diving confidently forward in the face of the unknown. "I am Mysterion. Batman sent me to look for you Mr. Nelson, you've been missing for a while."

The illusion that Kenny hoped was of Kent Nelson, did not reach visibly. But after a brief pause that lingered a fraction too long, it said in a kindly tone. "The Tower detects my presence nearby, I'll let you through into the lounge to wait."

"Thanks." The apparition then vanished in an instant, revealing behind it a short stone corridor that led to a single door. Throwing a cautionary glance over his shoulder, Kenny quietened his worrisome thoughts and trudged onwards, stepping through the door (this time obeying the laws of physics that regarded doors) into the Tower's interior beyond.

Upon crossing over the threshold a chilling feeling rushed through him, a familiar presence to him; his sixth sense for the strange and unusual was still bristling. He didn't know what had just happened, but he was pretty sure that door had led him to some further place than euclidean architecture would allow. He had a feeling that the room now laid out in front him may not have been in this geographical place a moment ago. But then he reminded himself that this was called The Tower of Fate, and a location didn't gain such a title by being just your regular old building.

The room he now found himself in was spacious, but no more than a large living room in an up market house is spacious. It was furnished as such too, with two old, over-stuffed armchairs and a similar couch across from them. Between the opposing furniture was a long coffee table by a crackling fireplace. Both the carpeting, the wood panelled walls, and the bureaus that stood against the walls, displaying fine china, gave Kenny the impression of a house owned by a rich elderly couple. Lived in for perhaps for as long as they had been alive, for the room held a queer aura of history in its musty smell.

With no indication of how long Nelson might be, if he were actually headed here at all such as the arcane answering machine had stated, Mysterion awkwardly took a seat on one of the armchairs, looking down at the polished wood surface of the coffee table… After a moment of tremulous silence, Kenny sank back into the chair with a beleaguered sigh. There was no one here, who did he have to pretend for? Thus he resolved, if Nelson wasn't here in twenty minutes, Mysterion would go looking for him. And in the meantime… He glanced around the room… In the meantime he would wish he had something to drink.

No sooner had the thought materialised in his mind, that a cup and saucer appeared on the table before him. It was filled nearly to the brim with a steaming dark liquid that smelled like the richest blend of coffee, maybe with one or two splashes of milk added. But rather than be too surprised by the matter, Kenny rolled his eyes. ' _Of course'_ he thought acquiescently ' _magic'._ Taking a draft, Kenny tasted the hot beverage and found it to be excellent, a little bit of milk and a spoon of sugar… Just how he liked it. How considerate.

Coffee cup in hand, Mysterion's patience would reach its upper limits before Kent Nelson did actually arrive. As the door swung open, Kenny was about to ask if the man got his kicks from disappearing out of nowhere, when he noticed that the old timer was not alone, and in a situation that probably explained his disappearance.

In the first second Mysterion took in the sight of Nelson, buckled at the knees and restrained with his hands bound. The large tanned man to his left, bearing a goatee that screamed 'evil version of someone' and a shirt so unbuttoned it was a wonder it didn't just fall off. An utterly ridiculous dress-up, Kenny could say, if he himself weren't dressed in the cheapest of cheap superhero costumes. Then to the right of Nelson was a thinner man, all dark colours and pale skin, a certifiable goth kid, complete with mangy cat cradled in wiry arms.

In the second second, Kenny had seen their eyes move. There was a reason, he remembered, why in a fight you watched your opponents eyes. The eyes reacted before the body could play catch up, betraying intent in a heartbeat, and what Kenny guessed from the way they reacted. He should probably do something. Nelson raised an eyebrow in confusion, but perhaps pleasant surprise as well. The broad shouldered man narrowed his eyes in suspicion. And the cat cradler reacted most interestingly of them all, his eyes widening in shock, before turning wild in an instant and zeroing in on him like some kind of predatory feline.

In the third second Kenny threw caution to the wind, along with his cup and saucer, spinning the small plate at the man on the left, and hurling the cup at the goth kid. The saucer caught the larger one in the teeth, while the cup spiralled towards the other, flicking the lukewarm dregs of coffee into his and his cat's faces before smashing against the wall next to them.

The one who'd acted as a bullseye for the flying saucer, whipped his head back to glare at Mysterion, pointing a cane at him. Sensing nothing charitable from this action, Kenny grabbed the end of the coffee table and lifted it onto its end, as from the cane shot out a dancing wave of electricity that impacted against the table that Kenny now had propped between him and them. Mysterion figured that this was no normal voltage, when the table started to crack down the middle, so in desperation he threw his shield back at the assailants before running up and over the couch beside him. Diving across the room Kenny just wished for a door that would take him somewhere, anywhere out of this room. He wasn't foolish enough to try a head on fight with two unknowns, let alone two who were capable of detaining Earth's Magic Mojo Guru or whatever he was called.

As with his coffee before, the Tower supplied Mysterion's demands, a door growing out of nowhere in the wall closest to him. So with fleeting fear crossing through him, as a shock of red energy crashed against the spot he had just occupied, Mysterion bolted through the door into whatever place the Tower had arranged beyond.

What did present itself on the other side was a spiral staircase, claustrophobically contained in a very tight stone brick cylinder. Mysterion slammed the door shut behind him, and made the split second decision whether to go up, or down. Without hesitating lest the door be imploded off it's hinges, he went up, scaling the tall stone steps two and then three at a time.

—?M?—

What he didn't expect to find, after however long scaling these steps, was a stop for an elevator. Complete with buttons to call the lift up or down. Seeing as there was no telling when this staircase would end, and that there were no sounds of pursuit, Mysterion paused in front of the doors, and pressed the up button. Shortly after there was a soft 'ding' sound, and the doors slid open, revealing inside the cosy compartment none other than Kent Nelson, along with two teenagers. One a ginger boy with his hands in his pockets, looking just as confused as Mysterion felt. The other, a tall girl with very familiar looking blonde hair. Both were dressed like they were just hanging out on a weekend, which Kenny supposed they technically were, still they proved a fine contrast to Nelson's suit and his own Mysterion garb.

Kenny blinked owlishly for a moment, before deciding to roll with it, and stepping into the elevator with them. Turning to face the doors as they closed, the action seemingly as casual as if they were all in an elevator at the local mall. Because with magic, sometimes you just had to roll with it.

They stood awkwardly in the elevator for a moment, silence surrounding them. Until Mr. Nelson turned his head to regard Mysterion and said humorously. "… I see you took the stairs."

Looking at the old man with his eyes, Kenny shrugged slightly and replied. "I asked the tower for help, and that's what it gave me."

"Well I never." Nelson remarked, his eyes sparkling with amusement. After which he glanced at the number counter that ticked by as they passed floors, and his voice took on a contemplative tone as he mused.. "The Tower doesn't usually respond so readily to outsiders."

Kenny didn't have a short answer for that, so he settled by giving a non-answer. "Guess i'm a natural."

"Hmm…" Nelson deliberated once again, taking one hand off his cane to scratch his chin in thought. "I don't believe we've met." He finally said jovially, looking back at Mysterion with an open friendly expression.

"Mysterion. And only in passing." Kenny couldn't help but feel there were better things to do than conduct introductions, but the old man seemed calm and in control, so Kenny supposed he could trust in where the sorcerer supreme was taking them.

"I'm Kent Nelson, nice to meet you. This is Wally and Artemis." The old timer swept his hand back to indicate the two other occupants of the elevator, which is when it clicked.

"Artemis?" He asked, even though it was obvious now that her and that blonde archer were one and the same.

"Um… Hi?" She ventured nervously, shifting awkwardly as they stood there, _her;_ without a trace of superhero regalia, dressed in casual civilian clothes, and _him;_ in full, midnight cloaked, rat-fur grey shirted splendour.

"Oh, you two know each other?" Nelson asked warmly, seeming surprised but glad.

Artemis' reply was bashful at best, after all, when last they'd met she had entangled him in a net and seen him explode in a car wreck. Whether she remembered it all or not. "We've… met."

"You leave your bow at home or something?" Kenny asked, a bead of teasing sarcasm making it's way into his voice, a minor attempt to break the ice.

"Or something." She dead panned back at him, gaze turning haughty and unamused. Clearly not one for sardonic humour it seemed.

"As I was saying before you joined us Mysterion. We're up against an opponent with tremendous mystic power." Nelson interjected with a wry chuckle.

"Abra Kadabra? Pfft, as if, guy's all show and no biz, Flash even proved he uses advanced science to simulate magic." Wally answered flippantly, waving away the threat that the two enemies posed.

Which Nelson seemed to agree with, certifying with a gestural jab of his forefinger into the air. "Right you are."

"He is?" Artemis blurted out, quite scandalised by the idea that the ginger one would be right about something. All this Kenny watched with a raised eyebrow underneath his hood and mask, holding his tongue against arguing that whether their opponents were legitimate magicians or not, didn't matter, when either could potentially kill them.

"Abra _is_ a charlatan. But Klarion the Witch Boy, the kid with the cat?" As Kent spoke this he gave a considerate look at Mysterion, helping him to identify what up until then had been two unnamed attackers. "Is an actual Lord of Chaos, the natural enemy of a Lord of Order like Dr. Fate."

"Right, you're a 'lord of order'." If Wally had rolled his eyes any harder, Kenny was sure the boy would've seen his cerebral cortex.

Kenny couldn't help but roll his eyes at Wally's comment himself, grumbling out a response to the skepticism in the face of such strange events. Although, come to think of it, Kenny didn't know exactly how these two had gotten here either. "If he's not, that means I've just been chasing a crazy old guy around his inter-dimensional tower."

Nelson chuckled his rumbling laugh again, and asked curiously. "Are you a believer, Mysterion?"

Mysterion rolled his shoulders to stretch out a cramp that had built up from him running up all those stairs so suddenly, and responded plainly. "Magic is just a word. But then so is Science… The Universe doesn't care what words we use; magic, science, that stuff's still gonna try and kill us. Ain't no 'not believing' in that… So yeah, I guess I do believe."

Wally threw his hands up in mockingly exaggerated exasperation, before Artemis jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. Nelson however, stared at Kenny for a long moment, thoughts unknowable but expression appraising. Until he spoke again. "Smart lad. If it puts you at ease Wally, I'm not a Lord of Order. I'm just an old coat Fate used to put on. Until my wife, Inza, convicted me there could be more to life." At this the old magician brought out a pocket watch from his pocket, flicked it open and stared longingly at a picture on the inside of the casing. Kenny couldn't see the picture from where he was standing, but assumed it to be the old timer's wife.

A happier smile soon came over Nelsons's face, as he spoke almost to himself, becoming lost in memory. "Ah, she was a real pistol that Inza…" Another long moment passed where none of the three teenagers wanted to be the one to break the old man of his revery. When suddenly Kent snapped the brass watch shut and pocketed it once more, resuming. "Anywho, Klarion's after the helmet, and if he gets his greasy paws on it he'll turn the world into his own personal playground of pandemonium. Ah, here's our floor." As the sorcerer finished his explanation the elevator made a soft 'ding' sound, and the doors slid open to reveal a large, perspectively agnostic room. Stairs on the walls and ceiling, doors that looked like they led nowhere. Mysterion couldn't help but think to himself, that Dr. Fate must've met M.C. Escher at some point in his life, in order to live in a building such as this. Thankfully Kenny was familiar with these kind of geometries, but what he was not so well acquainted with was the giant brass-gold bell, occupying the centre of the room.

The next few seconds happened almost too fast to get a handle on, but as the four of them walked up to the room's centrepiece a rectangle of light seared itself into the ceiling close by and soon formed a solid portal of light, from which fell two teenage boys followed by a floating girl. Not for the first time tonight Mysterion realised what he'd been missing, and now the presence of two random teenagers in an elevator made a little more sense. They were certainly a distinct set of silhouettes after all, even if the kid in the superman shirt wasn't wearing the exact same thing as last time Mysterion had seen him. "Oh, so you're Robin's team?" He hated playing catch up, but supposed they were now finally on the same page.

As minor cries of indignation went up from several members such as "Robin's not-" and "We are a team i-" each one of them was cut off by a lance of lightning that whizzed by his ear.

"No time for chat!" Nelson hollered, before tapping the bell with his cane and eliciting a resonant 'gong' sound, that reverberated not just through the air, but through the mind as well. Kenny couldn't explain why he dove head first into the golden bell, but as Nelson disappeared into the metal he remembered why he'd been sent here in the first place. To look for the old man, and now that he'd found him? Mysterion wasn't about to lose him again.

They emerged onto a cold and windy rooftop, brutalist parapets and crenellations bordering the edge with no other architectural motifs in sight. As they stood there under the stars, Mysterion felt something, and as Wally appeared next to Nelson, he spotted it out of the corner of his eye. He'd sensed it before he'd seen it, and now, atop the Tower of Fate, he could react in only one way.

Mysterion threw himself in the path of a crimson torrent of energy, that had been, up until it struck him, heading straight for the old man. A projectile of pure chaos, thrown by Klarion the Witch Boy and embraced by Kenny McKormick.

He felt something snap around his heart. Wally cried out, Nelson began chanting something, and as Mysterion settled on the hard stone floor, he glimpsed the endless night sky above him. Among the heavens there was another, larger star, and before his eyes drifted shut and the blackness became complete, Mysterion realised it wasn't a star. It was the Helmet of Fate, floating high above him.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

A/N:

So… Cliffhanger?~ I know, i'm the worst. But the next chapter is one I've got mostly planned already, so it won't take as long as chapters usually do. Providing work doesn't get in the way as it always seems to do. But yeah, thank you for reading, as usual if you have anything to say leave a review, I always love reading them. And if you're ever wondering when the next chapter will be, roughly, I update my profile from time to time with regards to how the chapter is coming along. I'll answer some review questions next time, but until then, thanks for reading! - Faff.


	13. Denied

Try to Remember

Chapter 13: Denied

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the established fictional materials used in this crossover.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

"You're a has-been, Nabu! Not even that old fogey wants you anymore!" Screeched Klarion, throwing bolt after bolt of blood red lightning at the avatar of order. The projectiles were met with a dwindling forcefield of flickering golden energy, but as Fate fought to draw up enough power to throw the irritating Witch Boy off, he and the other Lord were frozen solid by a sound never before heard in the hallowed halls of the Tower of Fate.

It was a gunshot. The lonely, echoing rapport of a handgun, and twinned with it, as if on cue, Klarion the Witch Boy keeled over. Screaming in pain, Klarion's burning eyes lashed out towards where his familiar, Teekl, lay bleeding not ten feet away.

"I didn't set out to kill a cat today, but I'm sure as hell up for putting a whiny little bitch in his place." Their eyes, along with those of Kent Nelson, went immediately to the speaker.

Standing off to the side, thrown clear earlier by a blast of energy and momentarily forgotten about, was Mysterion. A sizzling scar evident on his chest, directly positioned over his heart. Purple cloak flipping idly in the light wind. Shadowed eyes, cold and steady underneath his mask and hood. Arm outstretched, pointing a grubby handgun right at a pussycat.

"My cat! You shot my cat! You, shot, my cat!?" Disbelief and pain bled throughout Klarion's indignant exclamation, scurrying over to his familiar and hissing darkly as he scooped up the animal. "I'll get you for t-eep!" The Chaos Lord's tirade was cut off as another bullet impacted the ground at his feet, eliciting a high pitched yelp from him and causing the Witch Boy to blink out of existence, summoning a roiled black portal to quickly teleport himself and his familiar out of harms way.

The dust settled. Dr. Fate's glimmering golden cape swirled behind him as the Lord of Order got to his feet, staring pointedly at Mysterion. Kent Nelson, did much the same, dismissing the golden shield spell he himself had been hiding behind for the duration of the fight.

There was, what can only be described, as a very awkward silence. The kind of silence that falls only when three, mysterious, magical, powerful entities meet at the same point… It happens more often than you would think, but here the attitudes of each of the individuals were evident, no matter how little of their face was visible. In fact, the clarity of intent seemed all the more obvious the less of someone's face there was to see. Doctor Fate, with Wally's face obscured under that golden bell, was by far the easiest to read. Staring as he was, directly at where Mysterion stood, an almost tangible air of vicious suspicion, and eager interest hanging about him. Mysterion, with face half obscured, was obviously unfazed by the Lord of Order's attention, but still clearly angry at the opposing Lord who had just fled. Kent Nelson, who wore no mask, held an expression that was practically unreadable, other than to say he looked kind. Which one could say of the old sorcerer at almost any moment of the day, being as he was, a kind old man.

"I will see the children safely out, and then we three must talk." The Doctor said, his voice tolling like an ominous bell. And as the golden age hero teleported away in the flash of a golden ankh, Kenny couldn't help but smugly smirk that from the Doctor's tone, it seemed like he wasn't included among the 'children'. That smugness was short-lived however, as he then realised he didn't have much of a clue as to what Fate would want with him. Which was a lie, as he had various things that a being such as Fate might want to 'talk' with him about, but a lie to oneself is as easy to believe as it is to tell.

His thoughts were cut off however, as Kent Nelson approached him, leaning heavily on his cane. "Thank goodness you're alright. I'd feared you… well." In that moment Kenny could see, drawn on the old man's face, such an image of relief and worry that Kenny himself would have troubles with the guilt if he had died to that blast. Even if the old guy would've forgotten the 'loss' before you can say five stages of grief.

"Don't worry, I'm fine." Mysterion said, as he hurriedly tried to hide the obviously 'not fine' burn mark that was melting across his skin. "You good?"

"Hm? Yes, yes I'm fine, thanks to you of course." It showed how little thought Kenny had put into it, that for a short moment he didn't remember what Nelson was referring to. It was scarcely a second that he forgot he'd saved the sorcerer's life, but Nelson's expression changed as such in that moment, that it was clear he'd noticed the lapse in memory.

"Is, what's-his-name… Wally, wearing the…?" The question was rhetorical, and Nelson knew so, supplying the answer that Kenny actually wanted to ask for.

"Don't worry. Fate will let him go, the boy couldn't cast a spell to save his life, let alone bear the Helmet of Fate." If Kenny wasn't mistaken there was a slight look of uncertainty on the old man's face, but he dismissed it for now.

"Why Wally then?" Mysterion asked, curiously. "Why didn't you put the helmet on yourself?"

Just then Nelson let out a breath that Kenny wasn't sure he'd been holding or not. Giving out a burdensome sigh, Nelson answered with a melancholic look in his eye. "Honestly? I was scared. Scared that at my age Fate wouldn't be as durable as he needed to be to fight Klarion, and scared that if I was? I'd be trapped again."

"So you let some know nothing kid put it on instead?" Mysterion didn't mean to sound so accusatory, but he couldn't help the thought that this old man had doomed some kid, just because he was scared.

"No. Fate will let him go, I'll make sure of it." Now the doubt was gone from his voice, and the conviction with which Nelson now spoke did something to assuage Kenny's concern. The two of them shared a look for a moment, one that spoke perhaps of things only old souls know of certainty like that. But perhaps it was just the awkward silence that falls between two newly introduced strangers. "Well we best go find your friends then." Continued the elderly wizard, leaning on his cane as he started walking towards where an elevator had just risen up out of the flagstone floor.

"Wouldn't call them friends." Mysterion replied as he fell instep alongside Kent. "I've never met them before."

"You and Artemis seemed to know each other." Nelson said, providing small talk as they crossed the threshold of the lift, and turned to catch one last view of the blasted rooftop.

"Hm, more like acquaintance." Were Mysterion's dismissive words as the stone doors slid shut, sealing them inside the magically moving box.

—?M?—

The first formal introduction between Mysterion and the assembled team of teenage superheroes, was not particularly memorable. In so much as it didn't really occur. As Kenny and Kent emerged onto the main floor of the Tower, to find the group of burnt and bruised teens slowly recollecting themselves, Mysterion himself faded into the background, becoming a part of Nelson's shadow as they stood side by side throughout the exchange between the sorcerer supreme and the being who called itself Fate. Kenny for his part didn't pretend to know how to negotiate with such a being, not as well as Kent Nelson would at any rate, hence he remained quiet. On the team's part they seemed to err on the same side of the coin as him.

Sure enough Nelson's earlier words proved true, and Fate did relinquish his hold on the redheaded Wally, but not before some quiet words were traded between the two. During this time, Mysterion was left standing with his four peers.

"Who are you." It was the one with the iconic S emblazoned on his shirt who broke the silence, rather abruptly aiming his question at Mysterion.

Regarding this Superboy with a sidelong glance from under his hood, Kenny answered reasonably, despite the standoffishness. "I'm Mysterion…" Before raising his chin and rebuking the demand with equal stony stoicism."Who the hell are you."

In an effort to keep the peace, one of the team took a small step forwards; a tall boy, whose superhero mentor Kenny could not immediately place. "I apologise for the bluntness of my teammate. I am Kaldur'ahm. This is Superboy, M'gann, Artemis."

Not waiting for a response in kind, Artemis butted in to ask a question that seemed to have been eating at her, if her anxiousness to ask it was any indication. "So, what are you doing here?"

Keen to play coy, as opposed to come clean with what they clearly didn't already know, Mysterion reversed her question back at her. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Red Tornado sent us here to-" The blonde archer barely got into her explanation, when she was hastily interrupted by the other girl in the team.

"Artemis! We're not supposed to tell-" But in return Artemis cut her friend off as well, before any further worry could amount.

"It doesn't matter M'gann, he already knows who we are. He was with me when AMAZO crashed at Gotham Academy. I'm pretty sure he can put two and two together." With this Artemis looked from one member of her team to the next, begrudgingly shedding light on what had gone on behind the scenes that evening at Gotham Academy. Kenny at least had the good graces to feel like he'd unintentionally broken a secret pact, and looked away for a moment.

In an attempt at graciousness, Mysterion shrugged and illuminated. "You're not wrong. But I guess I'll answer. I was sent to check on this old timer, making sure he hadn't kicked the bucket." It may have expanded from there, but Kent Nelson returned at that point, the helmet of Fate held firmly in his grip, with a rather shaken speedster standing beside him.

"Now, you kids better get going, wouldn't want to be out too late." The old man said with a smile, before beginning the process of ushering them politely out of his tower. At the door though, Nelson caught Kenny by the shoulder, and being at the back of the group Mysterion stopped and looked at the old man. Nelson gaze the kind of nod that speaks volumes without actually implying anything constructive. But it was enough to get Kenny to stop and stay with the sorcerer supreme at the door to the tower.

The team were a good few feet away when Artemis looked back to see the two mystic figures standing silhouetted in the doorway. Raising an eyebrow she called back impulsively. "You're not coming?"

"No." Was the measured but not unkind response. "Tell Robin I said hi though." And with the hint of a smirk, Mysterion and Kent Nelson stepped back into the tower of Fate, and the door closed behind them. Leaving Artemis, once more, utterly at a loss for what to think of this individual. At least this time she wasn't alone however.

In fact, as the archer turned to rejoin her team, she noticed they too had stopped, and were staring back at the tower as it began to fade from visibility.

Kaldur, still trying to walk the path of an attentive team leader, noticed something about the way M'gann was staring at the space where the tower had been. Something Artemis herself only noticed by virtue of her seeing Kaldur perceive it. "M'gann? What's wrong…?"

"Back in the Tower. I couldn't read Mysterion's mind." The usually jovial martian's tone was worried and contemplative. Rightly so, Artemis considered, as her own curiosity broadened.

Jumping to a conclusion based on past experiences better left in the past, Superboy narrowed his eyes and said. "Mysterion's a robot?"

"Why didn't you say anything! What if he's about to attack Mr. Nelson!" His super speed seemed to help Wally when it came to leaping on points like this, a trait that Artemis could admit she did not find utterly infuriating about him.

"Wait wait wait!" Surprising her, it was M'gann who stopped the two more hotheaded members of their team before their ideas could run away with them. "I don't know he's a robot. I couldn't get anything from him, no emotions, no thoughts, it's like his mind wasn't even there. But I got the same from Wally when he had the helmet on, and sort of the same from Mr. Nelson."

"So you just read everyone's mind, is that it." Superboy's grumble did not go unheard, as M'gann spun around to wave her hands at him in denial.

"No-no-no-no! I only did it to see if they were telling the truth, I swear! But I couldn't read Wally at all, and I think Mr. Nelson just, let me in?" With M'gann pulling at her hair and looking so worried as to what the team might think of her, it was hard for the cloned Kryptonian to maintain his hostility in earnest.

Kaldur meanwhile placed a hand to his chin, and spoke thoughtfully. "Nelson is a powerful magician, it would make sense for him to have a method of blocking attempted mind-reading."

Darting her eyes to look back at the space previously occupied by the tower, Artemis posed the question she had asked herself several times tonight already. First when the mystery boy appeared in the elevator with about as much fanfare as someone dropping in on an old friend. And second when he had stood there next to Knet Nelson not one minute ago, and stepped back into the tower with him like that same old friend returning home. "So what does that make Mysterion then?"

"Hello Megan! It's obvious!" Maybe to a martian it was, but the rest of the team remained silent, until it became clear that the air-headed alien needed further prompting.

"… Is it?"

"Yes! He must be Mr. Nelson's protege! Clearly this Mystery boy is a powerful mystic too!" The explanation fit, but something stopped Artemis from immediately latching onto it, as one often does with ideas that fit the mould so easily.

Kaldur agreed, but if his tone was anything to go by he shared her skepticism. "That would seem to make sense."

Wally surprised her then, not by showing any different or more open-minded opinions, god forbid. But by speaking with an attitude that resembled, if she dared hope, thoughtful consideration. "On the roof Mysterion took a hit for Nelson. Didn't think about it just jumped in it's path…"

It was the fact itself that made Artemis think that M'gann might be onto something after all. "I'd say that's pretty convincing evidence."

"Yet Wally, you do not sound convinced." Trust Kaldur to pick up on the speedster's real feeling however.

"On the roof Mysterion was the one who cut the connection between Klarion and his cat; the cat was what let him stay in his physical form…" In another rare moment of thoughtfulness, Wally paused to juggle with his thoughts.

"But…?" Superboy prompted, suspicion lacing his tone.

"He used a gun…" The confused and concerned look on Wally's face matched the incongruous statement well. "Not very mystical if you ask me."

There was a stretch of silence between the friends then, before their leader began affirmatively. "… We will inform Batman during mission debrief, but for now Wally, we'll put it out of mind."

Then the team began the slow walk back to the bioship, but, not to let the walk be in stoic silence, Kaldur said. "I trust you will be more accepting of the mystic arts now though, Wally?"

As if the challenge had sparked some semblance of life back into him, Wally leapt to his ego's defence. "Woah! Who said I was accepting anything! Klarion just used unstable molecular phase shifting technology to replicate these 'magic' powers, and the cat was probably a highly-"

Not willing to let an opportunity slide, Artemis interrupted to say. "Can it, idiot, we get the picture."

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

A/N: Shorter chapter this time, it was originally longer, but I shifted some of the end into next chapter so I could get something out sooner. Plus next chapter kind of deserves to be its own thing, as opposed to an end to this one. But yeah, thirteen chapters, and I don't even want to think about how much time later, and Mysterion finally shares a few words with the young justice team. Hooray!

Oh, and regarding the fractured but whole, I have no plans to include any of the material from the game in this. Only because I have no means to play the game at all! (Thanks for the mac support Ubisoft) I'd watch a play through, but that's just not the same. Also I have to juggle so much combined lore already when I think about this story. I love south park, the Cthulhu mythos and young justice, but there's only so many times I can read/rematch an episode/book, let alone a season. So for now y'all who've gotten to play the new south park game can just bask in my envy.

Thanks for reading, if you read the authors note as well, thank you especially, i'm glad my rambling has reached someone. Follow, favourite, and review if you like! Till next time - Faff


	14. Interview

Try to Remember

Chapter 14: Interview.

Disclaimer: You know the drill. Not mine, I don't make money of this.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

Knet Nelson led Mysterion back into the tower, his ebony cane making a rhythmic click as it hit the floor every two and a half steps. They receded back through the hallway and emerged into a room Kenny had seen before, it was the first room he was invited into in the tower, only since he last saw it the mess that Klarion had caused seemed to have been repaired. The lounge come kitchen was left looking just as it had done when Kenny first set foot in it, old and regal, but refined and reserved all the same.

"So you managed to enter the tower without a key. Survived an energy blast from a lord of chaos, proceeded to get back up without a word of complaint. And you say you've never dabbled in the mystic arts?" Kent's voice was level, but twisted with slight amusement. But behind his eyes, Kenny could see a burning curiosity and suspicion.

Mysterion shrugged. "Never saw the need." Which was an answer far from the truth, but close enough depending on how you looked at things.

Sitting down at the dining table and gesturing for Mysterion to take the seat opposite him, Nelson set the Helmet of Fate upon the table next to him and continued casually. "I would've thought an entrepreneurial youngster like yourself would see the need for all the power he could get."

"There's two sides to every coin though, especially when it comes to magic." That, and he had Henrietta for any magical assistance he might need. Despite her grumbling, the goth girl had never refused to help him, either academically or mystically.

"That is true." Nelson mused appreciatively, before tilting his head and quietly suggesting. "It can be worth it though."

"Sometimes." Mysterion was quick to answer, fixing the old magician with an unreadable stare.

"… Also true…" Nodding his head absently, Nelson made a waving gesture to the side, whispering something under his breath. "Tea?" He asked Kenny, as a grey china teapot came drifting out of the kitchen cupboard to sit on the table, along with two mugs a pot of milk and a cup of sugar.

Mysterion nodded briefly, saying. "Little milk, no sugar."

"So Batman sent you?" Nelson asked, apparently making conversation. "The kids told me they'd also been sent by a Leaguer. How come you all weren't working together from the get go?"

That was a good question, Mysterion thought, one he'd have to put to the Bat himself. "I'll have to ask Batman that."

"Do you mind if I ask you some strange questions, Mysterion?" The Sorcerer's tone was tentative but calm, as he passed a mug of tea to the younger hero.

If he'd felt like being difficult, Kenny could've asked Nelson why he wanted his answers. But sensing what lay at the end of these questions might be quite illuminating, he agreed. "Ask away."

"Do you believe in fate?"

"Would you be offended if I said, not really…" There was a small silence, as both men simultaneously took a sip from their respective drinks.

"Not at all. Can't speak for this fella though." He tapped the helmet, which looked quite out of place on the dining table. "What do you believe in then?"

Kenny could say family, but that only applied to one part of his own. He had a less than stellar opinion of his parents. As for his brother, he only thought about him once every year, and even then it was with mixed feelings. There was only Karen, out of his whole messed up family unit whom he had always cared about. God? His relationship with religion was perhaps even worse than his relation to his family. Did he believe in any religion; of course not, not after what he'd seen. If anyone thought what he'd seen was a good argument for any existing religion, and not the existence of some horrific cosmic joke, then they were surely mad. But did he believe in a higher power, a creator? Possibly. If a universal creator did exist though, Kenny was certain of only one thing; it would not be something he could conceive of. Which left him with the thought; was there any union, or order he believed in…?

And as nebulous as his answer was, it was as good as he could give. So Kenny answered. "Justice."

"And what is justice to you?" Nelson questioned neutrally, his look and tone giving little away.

"It's about protecting. It's not about good or evil, or the law, or order. It's just doing what's right, what's fair. And sometimes that doesn't work out, sometimes it leads to stupid or bad things, but a lot of the time it works. And it's better than doing nothing." As he answered a myriad of memories tried to surface in Mysterion's mind, bubbling up and making themselves known. Little painful mistakes, some bigger than others, some much bigger. But none worth remembering right now.

Kent Nelson considered his answer for a while, taking intermittent sips of tea. Before he nodded, perhaps satisfied with the answer, and carried on to another question. "If Batman asked you to come here, i have a feeling you might've heard something like this before, but… Why carry a gun?"

This one was easy for Kenny to answer, and he did so with a small amount of sarcastic bite. "Because some of us don't have the time, money or good fortune to come up with an alternative. Mr. Magic Hat."

Nelson did not chuckle, instead moving swiftly to his next question. "You ever done something you really regret?"

"Hasn't everybody?"

"What happened?"

Kenny paused for a short time, dwelling on all his numerous regrets. But there was only one that rose up in this case, as it always tended to do. Flashes of a dark alleyway, cold concrete, blood streaked across the once spotless snow, a figure laying there, groans of pain, a word, a name, a question. 'Kenny?'

Mysterion answered, his tone low and contemplative. "… I did something stupid once. It ended up getting someone killed…"

The next question came out of nowhere, Nelson took a moment to assess Kenny's answer and reaction, and then just seemed to continue on. Evaluating him. "Do you think the universe exists in order, or in chaos?"

Happy to leave that memory behind, Kenny turned his focus to his answer, voicing thoughts he'd rarely had the time to talk about. "I think it exists in chaos. But I think you'll get a different answer depending on who or what you ask, so if your real question is 'is this existence one of order, or of chaos' then the answer would be both and neither."

"What is on your mind, right now."

Kenny drained the last dregs of his tea, and shot back. "I'm wondering what these questions are leading up to. I'm wondering why the helmet of fate is sat on a dining table between us like some kinda weird salt shaker. And I'm wondering when this is gonna wrap up because it's getting pretty late."

Nelson glanced at his wristwatch, eyebrows raising slightly. Nevertheless, he replied in the same straightforward manner he'd been speaking in for the majority of this interview. "To answer you simply; these questions are leading up to one particular question. One very important question. One I'm not sure I want to ask you, given that i know almost nothing about you. But one that needs to be asked, sooner or later, to someone. The fact that this question is mine to ask at all, is something I'm quite grateful for, and I myself am worried how long that window of fate will be open to me for."

"So what is this final question?" Mysterion dared to ask, his eyes drifting from the old man to the golden helm of Nabu, which was sat between them, the centrepiece casting it's shadow across the dark wood tabletop.

"… Not yet, a few more." Nelson was speaking slowly, his voice dark and intense, resonating with some ethereal history.

To which Kenny could only say. "Alright."

The next set of questions and answers came in rapid succession. "Does Batman trust you?"

"No." A shake of the head.

"Do you trust Batman?"

"No." Another shake in the negative.

"Do you trust me?"

A slight angling of the head in consideration, but an answer just as quick as the last. "More than I trust Batman."

"Why is that?"

"I can see your face." The answer seemed to slap Nelson out of whatever strange trance he'd slipped into, and the old wizard gave Mysterion a pleasant smile. Until Kenny added. "Also you're not an asshole."

"Language." The old fashioned gentleman admonished. "But thank you, I'll relish that compliment… How long have you called yourself Mysterion?"

"Since I was twelve." Though it seemed longer.

Nelson's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Twelve? Well I never… What's changed since then?"

"A lot." There were those memories again, whispers from his childhood, this time both good and bad. Change wasn't always for the better, and that didn't always mean skeletons left behind him, locked away out of sight. Sometimes it meant tear stained cheeks, a warm embrace, a bitter laugh, the kind of joker only old friends can share. Lots of things had changed, and he'd left a lot behind. It was often that he wondered if it had been for the better, if it would be for ever that he left those things behind. "A lot has changed… But I don't feel any different."

"… Would you become Doctor Fate."

"What?" Was Kenny's stale, stunned reply. He'd been expecting some mystic offer, but nothing quite so blunt, quite so sudden. "You want me to be Dr. Fate?"

"I believe you have the potential, and Fate has set his sights on you. Says you've got the right aura, and something else that he's not quite sure about. Funny that, for Fate not to know… I don't think he likes it much." Nelson tapped the golden bell with a hand, regarding it with a sardonic smile.

Brow creasing in confusion and irritable realisation, Kenny pressed. "So what then? Fate wants to try me on? He can stick it up his ass."

"Language. Kids these days…" There was little conviction in his reprimand now, but Nelson continued on to answer delicately. "It's not like that, not really. He wants to meet you."

"Then you put it on and we can talk. Or he should've done it when that ginger kid had the helmet on." Kenny naturally did not like the idea of someone taking over his body like Fate seemed to have done with Wally. But Nelson tried his best to calm him.

"It doesn't sound like he wants this conversation to be between anyone other than him and you… Make of that what you will." Mysterion did however detect a mild note of caution in the old man's voice, which didn't do anything to reassure him.

"If I put that on, there's no guarantee it's coming off is there?" The suggestion was beginning to anger him, and Kenny stood up from the table, pointing at the helmet accusingly.

"…" Nelson's lack of reply, was itself a clear and obvious answer.

There was something else in his look though, that made Kenny connect another dot in his mind. "You want someone to put it on don't you?"

Nelson looked pained now, and when he eventually answer, Kenny saw that there was a sad resignation in him that at least cool his flared anger. "… The world needs Dr. Fate."

Not being angry however, did not mean he wasn't bitter with the old magician. "For all your fear and worry, you're still just as eager as Fate to dump it on someone else."

"It's more complicated than what we want." Fire ignited in the old man then, the straying embers of an aged hero still flickering for his duty.

But Kenny was having none of his indignant sense of duty. He'd seen adult heroes become wrapped up in their own crap before, a certain Captain came to mind. "… I get it. Is it a blessing, is it a curse, that old steaming pile of bullshit."

"Langu-" Nelson started, but Mysterion cut him off sharp. "Fuck it." With deft hands Kenny took the helmet up, and turned it so he and the helm were face to face. With narrowed eyes, Kenny spoke directly to the eyes of the artefact. "Let's get one thing straight, tin can. If I don't walk out of this here tonight, with my own mind. Then you best never take me off, because if you do, I will bury you where no light can ever touch you again… Now let's try you on for size."

"No, kid, wait-" But if Nelson was having any second thoughts they were not strong enough to cause him to do anything, as Kenny swept back his hood, lifted the golden bell over his head and slid it down over his half-masked skull.

For a moment all was quiet.

"… Something supposed to happen here?" Kenny's voice reverberated inside the helmet, muffled confusion echoing around the golden helm.

"Ah…" Kent Nelson was stood stock still, eyes fixed in perplexed uncertainty on Mysterion who still stood in front of him, all himself, not a trace of Fate about him. The gold of the helmet casting a stark contrast against the darker purple and grey hues of his costume. "That's unexpected…"

Strangely, Kenny removed the helmet, and turned it over in his hands. He was, in truth, a little let down. He wasn't exactly eager to have his body controlled, but it would have been one hell of an interesting experiment. It had been reckless, yes, but nothing ventured led to nothing gained. "That ever happen before?" He asked Nelson, proffering the helmet to him.

"… No…" Lost for words, the sorcerer supreme took the artefact back and stared at it like he was holding a bomb that was meant to explode. "No, I can rightly say it hasn't… If I could have a moment, I just need to talk with Fate." Nelson closed his eyes and Kenny could almost see some sort of link between him and the helmet, strong, vibrant, golden. Such was this bond, that Kenny wasn't entirely sure if it was something he was meant to see or not, whether it was a tangible magical connection, or it was somethingg his attuned sixth eldritch sense had picked up. When the old man opened his eyes again his face was stern, thoughtful, but somehow a little hopeful.

With a smile on his face, Nelson now addressed Kenny in the friendly grandfatherly tone he'd spoken with when they'd first met. "Hate to take up more of your time, kid. I'm sure you've got better things to do than hang out with an old timer like me, but I need to head over to the League for a time and talk with some people. I'd like it if you came with me?"

Looking between the old man and the helmet of Fate, Mysterion sighed heavily. "Thing is… I don't have anything better to do. Lead the way. Old timer." After all, he'd had longer nights than this.

—?M?—?M?—?M?-

 _A/N: This one took a long time, mainly because I've been very busy lately. My day to day is kind of creatively exhausting too, so as a result I don't have the healthiest writing habits. But regardless, I'm quite happy with how this chapter turned out, dialogue-wise at least._

 _Favourite, follow and/or review at your leisure. And again, thanks for reading._

 _-Faff_


	15. Gone Midnight

Try to Remember

Chapter 15: Gone Midnight

Disclaimer: Do I even have to put a disclaimer? I see it all the time on other stories so I felt the need, but… never mind. The wonderful properties of South Park, Young Justice, and the Cthulhu Mythos are no things of mine!

?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

The Hall of Justice at midnight was a quiet place, made even more silent by the fact that there was only one person there to hear it. Everything from the persistent ticking of a wall clock, to the lethargic, unharmonious drumming of raindrops against ceiling windows, went towards creating the atmosphere of a place that never really sees any visitors at this time of night. It was as if all the sounds of an unheard hours were coming out to show off to their solitary occupant. An occupant who was sat back against a tabletop, tapping his foot impactiently, and waiting for the return of the man who had brought him there.

Mysterion was not exactly pissed off with Kent Nelson, for the man commanded a certain kind of respect given his age and power. Even mores the purple, grey and black clad vigilante did not mind that Mr. Nelson had managed to transport them across the country, from Massachusetts to Washington D.C. in all the time it takes to hop into a phone booth. A fact Mysterion was still getting used to, since teleportation, for him required something a little more strenuous. However, despite his venerable age, tremendous magical power, and access to convenient travel, Kent Nelson did not seem to be a man who placed very much stock in time, more specifically in relation to his own place in it. Because, Kenny McKormick reflected grouchily, the old man had been gone for forty-five minutes.

They had both arrived at the sparkling Hall of Justice, with it's white walls and brass statues set in dolorous moon-cast shadows, at twelve o'clock precisely. Where, after entering through a side-door and proceeding into what must be the main foyer, Kent had told him to 'wait here a moment' and 'try and dry some of the rain off'. After the old timer had disappeared further into the building, leaving Kenny in the large, dark room by himself, the young man had looked around for somewhere to dry his rain-soaked cloak. There were some radiators on a far wall, but after crossing over to see if they were on, Kenny discovered to his annoyance that they were just as cold as he was. As such he'd spent a despondently damp and sullenly sodden forty five minutes, walking around the room and inspecting it's decor. Yet despite it's copious framed photographs of League members, dazzling arrays of computer screens, and sets of comfortable chairs, Mysterion had found himself incredibly bored. When ten minutes had passed, he was checking behind the photo frames for hidden safes or listening devices. By twenty-five he was looking under chairs and tables for hidden trapdoors to secret labs. By thirty-five he'd explored every inch of this room. And by forty he'd told himself that he would wait just another five minutes, after which Kent Nelson could go fuck himself, and he would leave.

It was when the wall clock ticked over forty-five minutes past the hour, that Mysterion headed for the door, with one disdainful look back at the door Nelson had exited through. Kenny had tried that door of course, but it had apparently locked behind Nelson, either that or the old man didn't want him delving any deeper into the Justice Leagues base of operations. Just as he was about to leave the way he came however, Mysterion heard a door behind him open, and several footsteps enter the room.

"Took your fucking time." Mysterion groused, as he turned around to see three imposing figures standing at the other end of the room. Two of them he recognised, and one he would very much like to recognise more often; strictly speaking as Kenny McKormick that is. For two of them were Batman and Kent Nelson, while the other was recognisable as Justice League member, Black Canary.

Their dark colours; the black and white of Nelson's suit, the black and grey of Batman's costume, and the black and yellow of Canary's outfit and hair, stood out like a shadow over spilt ink. So dimly-lit was this room that the only things about them that stood out to any degree, were their faces, or what was visible of them in Batman's case. Each of them appraised him in the own way, Kent was still smiling, Batman was dour as ever, and black Canary was looking at him with a friendly if frankly curious eye.

Cutting across his profanity, Nelson struck in by saying. "Language. But yes, apologies for our tardiness, it's sometimes hard to get ahold of people this late at night."

"We've been informed on what transpired a the Tower, and Kent has told us what he saw, what he now believes. So we have some questions for you." Batman was straight to the point as always, and Kenny was beginning to get used to it. Instead of rolling his eyes and relenting, he simply nodded his head by way of an answer.

Then Black Canary stepped forward, crossing some of the distance between the two sides. "Hello Mysterion, I'm Black Canary. I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind?" Her tone was hardly the most friendly thing in the world, but Kenny was reminded of various authority figures he'd met during his life; the stern but fair sort.

All that feasibly remained to do was for him to accept and say. "Shoot."

"First of all…" She passed a quick glance at Batman, so quick it was almost invisible, but as brief as it was it showed her hesitation. The need to check if they were really doing this. "We want you to tell us who you are… We can't fully trust you otherwise."

Kenny didn't reply for a moment; he hadn't expected them to be so blunt. But perhaps the time for flirting around the subject was over. It still didn't change his answer, so he hid his exasperation and said. "I don't want to do that."

"Afraid we'd recognise you?" Canary's tone was light, but it was clear they had considered the possibility that he could be someone important. He'd just have to disappoint them.

"You wouldn't." He replied, holding her inquisitive gaze, the silent glimmer of amusement behind his eyes.

"Do you have something to hide?" Again her tone was skeptical, but not outright suspicious.

"Obviously." He let nothing show in his tone or facial expression, keeping the three venerated hero's on their toes. Partly for his own amusement, partly for theirs, and partly because he was being basically interrogated in the Hall of Justice, he deserved to have some fun with it.

Black Canary was not impressed it seemed, and she shot another glance at Batman, this time one bearing the seal of a woman annoyed. Batman gave no reaction, perhaps playing the same game as Mysterion, but somehow Mysterion himself doubted that. "… Can you tell us why you don't want to reveal your identity." The blonde heroine turned her attention back onto him.

Her insistence twigged Kenny's own annoyance, and an edge crept into his voice. Nothing aggressive, but enough of a shift to let her know he did not enjoy this line of questioning. "The fewer people who know the safer it'll be." Again, something that should've been obvious.

"You can entrust your safety to us, you know that right?"

It went without saying, so Kenny spelled it out for her. "I'm always safe, it's not my safety I'm worried about."

"You have people you care about?"

The fact she phrased it as a question, really did piss him off now, and he felt provoked enough to completely break the mask of impassivity he had been toying with so far. "I have a person. That makes it all the more important."

"If you let us know who you are, we can help you protect this person." Was she talking to him like he was a child now? Suggesting he couldn't look after his own sister?

"I think one big brother is enough." The idea of he and Karen being under any kind of surveillance was something he found greatly distasteful.

"So it's your sister?"

Then it leapt out at him; what she had been doing. Black Canary wasn't just blindly asking him questions that he wasn't going to answer. She knew he wasn't going to answer them straight out, so instead she was manoeuvring him into a position where he would give her the answers without even realising it. That's what those uncertain looks at the Bat had been about; her own questions about whether this was the kind of questioning that built trust. Short answer was; it wasn't. But one thing couldn't be denied. "… You're good."

"I'm not trying to trick you." He saw the honesty in her face, and realised for the first time how much he could respect hero's who didn't hide their faces. "We need to know who you are if you're going to-"

"Going to what." A little thread of patience in him snapped. Canary wasn't being patronising, but that didn't matter, he was being backed into a corner, and as much as he could respect her guile, he couldn't let them treat him like one of their own, like one of their sidekicks. "I've not agreed to anything except to come here and chat, which I've done out of my own goddamn charity by the way. So before Batman turns on the bad cop routine, y'all better ask what it is you wanna ask." Whatever form of questioning Batman had planned, if any at all, Mysterion would have none of it Knowing full well what it was they wanted to ask, he turned his iron gaze on Nelson.

"I want you to become the next Dr. Fate." For the second time that night, Nelson brought up that almost unfathomable question. Now however, the old man seemed to be a little more forthcoming with information "The Helmet doesn't overwrite control of your body. That opportunity is something we can't pass by, it's everything I could've hoped for in the next Dr. Fate."

"The helmet doesn't work on me, i don't see how I can be Dr. Fate if that's case."

"With the right training you could learn to open that innate barrier around your mind and reach out to meet Fate halfway." The mention of an 'innate barrier' around his mind was unsettling, but he wouldn't press on it now, not when Nelson seemed to be in favour of explaining his request. Because if he was honest, the idea of such power as Dr. Fate had, was very appealing to the young hero. No matter how much he might've said otherwise. "You could access the powers of Fate without losing your will to him, you could perform the decrees of Fate as his avatar, not his host."

But even if the helmet granted him the powers to put Cthulhu in a shoebox and ship him to the end of all things, the question remained. "Why would I want that." The answer was clear in many ways to Kenny, but something about Nelson's demeanour hadn't been there before back at the tower. He seemed more insistent this time, more eager to induct Kenny into the Legacy of Fate.

"I've said that the world needs Dr. Fate. I haven't explained exactly why. Without Fate there are corners of this world that we cannot see, enemies that move without us knowing. There are a great many things Fate does that the Justice League, even it's magical members, cannot do."

Kenny let the words sink in, unknowingly taking half a step back and bracing himself. "Like what…" The way Nelson was talking did not bode well, and Mysterion could almost sense what the old sorcerer's next words would be.

"Batman has told me you know about the Elder Gods." Kent Nelson's face had darkened, Mysterion was not sure when the change had come over him, but the former Dr. Fate looked even older than his venerable years would dictate.

But if Fate was indeed like him, in that his duty was to protect the world from the likes of Gla'aki, of Cthulhu, and all the nameless horrors that the world was better off forgetting. Then what did that make Fate. Because Kenny could understand that there were many forms an Elder God could take. "… What is Dr. Fate."

"Pardon?" The shift of subject seemed to catch the old sorcerer like whiplash.

So Kenny reiterated, speaking more deliberately this time to emphasis the importance of Nelson's next answer. "What is the thing in that helmet."

"Fate is…" He started but did not seem to know how, or whether at all, to finish. "Nabu is…"

Nelson's fluctuating expression of worry and anxiety did nothing to settle Mysterion's own fears. "You better not say what I think you're gonna say, old man."

Catching on, Kent began a brief explanation, but he spoke slowly, seeming to heavily consider the information he gave out. "He's not that. Fate's history begins in ancient Egypt, the Lords of Order and Chaos, their pasts are… complicated… but unless you intend to accept my offer, I cannot tell you more. I hope you understand that." The old man was being diplomatic as fuck in Kenny's opinion, but he couldn't exactly blame him considering what they were now talking about.

There was a brief silence, where the conversation settled down to it's previous level of awkward tension. "I'm not normally the one on this side of that ass-pull, but yeah, i understand." If Kenny was honest with himself, he did not like the taste of his own medicine.

"There is someone else who I felt you should talk to. He's the reason left you waiting as long as we did. He's not an easy man to get ahold of. But maybe if you talk with him, you can understand the depth of our need for Dr. Fate." In that moment Mysterion saw that desperate old man in Kent again, a man who was very old, a widower, who had a heavy legacy sitting on his shoulders.

Out of his suit pocket, Nelson withdrew a mobile phone. It was an old thing, nothing like what he knew the Justice League used for communication. It was all chunky buttons and a digital screen, not even a caller ID.

Nelson came over and handed it to Mysterion, who took it and put it up to his ear. "Hello?" He asked, wondering as to what kind of person would be on the other end of the line. Superman? Green Lantern? Flash? Captain Chucklefuck? It could've been anyone at that moment, but as Kenny would come to discover, it was a someone who enjoyed answering questions even less than he did.

"Mysterion. I have a set of questions for you. It is important you answer them quickly and truthfully." The reply came so fluidly and strangely that Kenny barely had time to recognise the words that had made up the sentence. The connection on the phone was poor, and little could be made out about the caller's voice other than that it was male, and rather low.

"Okay." Mysterion replied numbly, trying to put himself on the level of conference that this caller apparently expected him to be on.

"Look at the nearest clock, tell me what the time is exactly."

Frowning at the odd demand, Kenny looked around the room until his eyes chanced upon a wall clock. Walking over to better see it in the dark, he read out the time. "Uh, it's about forty-nine minutes and thirty odd seconds past midnight."

"Is there a sign nearby? Piece of paper? Something with writing. Read it aloud. Then look away. Then look back, read it again." The voice remained low and level, but the way he framed his words was a little alien, disjointed and fragmented. Like a drunk, or a particularly strained poet.

Picking up a newspaper that sat folded on a nearby table, Kenny read the first headline that caught his eye. "Officials say General Singh Manh Li has agreed to historic peace conference." Then, complying with the instructions, Kenny turned his face away for a few seconds, then looked back and read the headline again. "Officials say General Singh Manh Li has agreed to historic peace conference."

There was utter silence on the other end of the line, until after what seemed like an age the voice replied. It's words causing Mysterion's blood to freeze.

"… Dream much, Kenny?"

All rational thought, all thought in general, stopped inside his head. It was as if he'd suddenly been plunged, unassuming, into an ocean of arctic seawater. All he could do was numbly answer, the truth having been shocked out of him. "… Yeah."

"Every night?" The retort came quickly, the voice sounding more curious and less unfathomable.

Who was this person, how did they know him, what kind of joke was this. The only thing Kenny could think to do was keep them talking. "… Pretty much."

"Same dream or different?" The rabbit hole deepened, the voice seeming to grow closer to the speaker on the other end of the line.

"Different." The theming of the inquiries didn't vex him now, they would come to over the next few weeks, but right now they just stirred in him a terrible sense of weightless caution.

"Dreams are they, or nightmares?" The voice, despite it's knowing and calm way of speaking, did not provoke in him the ire that Black Canary's or Nelson's had. It just made him all the more wary.

"… Depends." Most people would call Kenny McKormick's dreams nightmares, but when they often amounted to premonitions or forewarnings, he couldn't bring himself to call them either.

"On what."

"A lot of things…" Finally the unknown, unreadable air of the voice got to him, he had to ask a question of his own, he had to know. "Who are you."

And just like that it was broken. "Goodnight, Mysterion. " Were the last words the voice spoke, before he heard the click of a receiver, and the line went dead.

He stood there, motionless, for as long as it took for the three Leaguers to get worried. "… Mysterion?" It was Kent Nelson who had called his name, but he seemed so far away. The Sorcerer Supreme might as well have been, because he was calling to Mysterion through a wall of the young man's own thoughts.

Every possible question came over him like a waterfall, each one tumbling over the next so fast and solid that he couldn't make heads nor tails of anything. He needed space to think, he needed something to drink, he shook his head and blinked. It was all too clear what he needed.

Much to Kent Nelson's shock, Mysterion's arm flew out and the phone he had been holding came speeding directly for his head. Batman, who had been standing closer to Mysterion while he talked, shot out his own arm and caught the device in mid air. But before they could say anything to the boy's action, Mysterion spoke again. His voice was slow and weighted down, the gravelly overtone having somewhat slipped away, revealing the melancholy voice of a teenager.

"Fuck you…" With one cathartic sigh, Mysterion turned away from the Leaguers, and began walking towards the door, unholstering something from his belt as he did so. The last words the three older hero's heard from Mysterion that night, were.

"I'm tired."

The gunshot didn't even have time to echo, before it was forgotten, and the dead body on the pristine floor of the Hall of Justice was swallowed up by the midnight shadows.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

 _A/N: I didn't spellcheck this one for some reason… Maybe it's because it's past one in the morning, maybe it's because I got this one done rather quickly by my standards. But I'm hoping if there are any typos and whatnot, that you can forgive them this time. I want to thank everyone who has been dropping reviews, you're all really very kind. And especially those of you who do so regularly, y'all are who I'm writing this for :) Thanks for reading, until next time._

 _-Faff_


	16. Reassurance

Try to Remember

Chapter 16: Reassurance

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

His eyes snapped open, and in came that reflexive breath of air, cold and harsh as it hit the back of his throat. His head hurt, the throbbing echoes of last night's death. Kenny let his head roll over so he could take in his alarm clock.

7:41AM

Too early.

The next sight he was aware of provided him with a different set of numbers. Equally as unwelcome.

11:23AM

Still too early.

1:57PM

It was now he supposed he should get up and do something, anything. He needed to move, and maybe then he could avoid thinking about his problem in a wholly new way.

Kenny rolled out of bed, groggy and bleary eyed. His room was cast in dimness, the sunlight intruding through the gaps in the curtains, desperate to light the room up for the day. It was humid too, the summer sun beating its sweltering rays against the glass, letting Kenny know that it was well into daytime and he shouldn't still be in bed.

He pulled off his parka, which, as it often did after such unplanned deaths, possessed the gall to reappear on his person. Beneath was an old white shirt, which he also tore off in his stumble over to the window.

In quick succession Kenny thoughtlessly, carelessly drew back the curtains and threw open his window. The summer breeze and midday sun hit him with their complimentary forces, and he sucked in a fresh breath of air. His face remained blank and bleak throughout.

Kenny stood there for a while, soaking up the sun and breathing in the air. Eventually he opened his eyes to look out at the world. He was rudely broken from his self-indulgence when he noticed an old woman in the house across from him, who was staring at him with eyes that could only be described as hungry. Flipping her the bird, Kenny quickly retreated from his window, and sat glumly down on his desk chair. The momentum with which he threw himself down caused the chair to creak and wobble perilously, but kicking at the floor with his feet, Kenny propelled himself into a soothing spin.

As the chair slowly came to a stop, a quiet groan dragged itself from deep within Kenny's lungs, a single word landing in his mouth after he had expelled all of that pent up cocktail of foul emotion.

"Fucking…"

He had no sentence to say, and no one to say it to. Kenny felt he just needed something to echo in his head that could take up space, before all his thoughts came rushing in.

"Okay."

He wasn't so much talking to himself, as he was reassuring himself. The prime question that sat in his mind was; how did they know my name?

A question to which the answer was far from forthcoming. He knew virtually nothing about the person who had spoken to him last night.

Wanting some way to keep his thoughts coherently ordered, Kenny guided his chair over to his desk and plucked out a piece of paper and a pen. It was time to brainstorm.

What did he know about the owner of that voice?

First: They were a member, or at least an associate of, the Justice League. So presumably they were someone with at least some strength of moral character. He was staking a lot on the reputation of the League there, but he felt confident with that assumption, for now.

Second: They wanted to know about his dreams. Of all things, his dreams. Now Kenny dreamt more than most. But like his deaths the horrible content of his dreams was something he had learned to live with, to push to the very back of his mind. Sometimes those dreams meant something, usually they were an extension of his Eldritch Sense, a radar that expanded out from him and brought him glimpses of any horrors that might be on his horizon. Though they were hardly water-tight, oftentimes they were just nightmares. He had long theorised that his dreams were a window into R'lyeh, that else-world of the Eldritch that he wished he could understand.

Third: They knew his name.

After some further thought, Kenny clenched his eyes shut and frowned deeply… Three things, that was all he knew. Sure he could try and infer more, extrapolate this or that, but from the few simple facts he had, Kenny was left with very little to work with. What was he going to do? Sit here and guess at the nature of one person who he knew so little about? He'd have better luck turning his own shit into gold.

Henrietta might help him. Or maybe even Kyle, or even the fat-ass himself… He hadn't seen them in a long time… He'd kept in touch of course, travelling back to South Park every couple of weeks to hang out. But that was before he and Karen were actually adopted, before they moved to Gotham City. What the hell would he even say to them anyway?

'Hey guys, long time no see! Remember when we used to dress up like superheroes? I still do that almost every night… no, it isn't a sex thing… yes, I do have a superpower, but you can't ever know about it… no, I don't have access to top of the line technology to help me… Yes, I am basically just a kid who runs around at night and beats the shit out of people who deserve it. What? You won't help me? Yeah, I figured…'

Maybe he could pay a visit to his go-to gothic sorceress. If not for help unravelling the voice, then at least to get some background on Dr. Fate, or Nabu, or whatever it was rattling around inside that helmet. The more he thought about it the more he assured himself that going to see Henrietta was the right thing to do. He would send her a text to let her know he was coming by, then at some ungodly hour he would scale the side of her house, and slip in through the window, as silent and as silky as a shadow. She would be sitting there, exasperated and dismissive, but still wanting to help. A perfect friend and confidant for Mysterion, even if she didn't exactly know who he really was. She might have ideas, theories, but no certain convictions. Even if she did, who he was beneath the mask had never seemed to matter to her, she just relished the chance to help him and show off her arcane knowhow.

What did that mean… That the only person he could go to for help in this strenuous situation, was someone who didn't even know his name… In just the short span of summer weeks that they had enjoyed so far, Kenny had realised one thing that he'd neglected for quite some time… He'd forgotten to make any friends. All his best friends were far away. In Denver he'd never made any lasting connections, he'd been too busy, too… preoccupied. Now here in Gotham he'd done the same, he'd not made any attempt to make friends at Gotham Academy, hell, in his first week he'd broken a girls nose. Whether the victim was a bully who deserved it or not, that kind of first impression tended to drive people away.

He was roused from his reverie when he heard raucous laughter in the next room; Karen's. At least, he thought optimistically, she was making friends. Gotham was good for her it seemed, although it remained to be seen whether it was good for him too.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

That night he made up his mind, he sent a text to Henrietta at 4:30 warning her of his impending arrival, and set out across the infinite dark expanse of death to meet her at 11:00 exactly. Which is where he found himself, eleven minutes past the hour, slipping in through her bedroom window, many many miles away from Gotham, under a subtly different night sky.

"Welcome to my lair, foolish hero." Far from being asleep, it seemed with the notification he'd given her Henrietta had rolled out the welcome mat for him. She was dressed in dark voluminous clothes, bracelets hanging from her wrists, as she waved her arms in a magical manner. Hanging in the air before her at this very moment was something that he'd never seen before about her person. It was suspended in the air, a glowing orb of what looked like boiling water, but which had the misty consistency of something that wasn't really there. With the delicate movement of her wrists, and the twisting of her fingers she looked to be encouraging the floating globe to spin in midair.

"Henrietta." He greeted sedately, meeting her eyes over the magically conjured orb.

She threw her head back and laughed maniacally, thrusting her palms outwards to propel her spell towards him. "Quake in fear before my magical powers."

Instead of doing whatever it was supposed to do, the gothic sorceress' spell evaporated into nothingness, the orb tearing apart like wet paper.

"… New spell?" He asked after a small moment.

Henrietta, looking dejected but not overly disappointed, replied. "Yeah, it sucks though, real magic is fucking hard."

"Real magic?" Mysterion questioned, interested to hear what his arcane confidant thought was real magic and what was not.

"Not bullshit street junk, none of the homo-magi shit that lame-ass, conformist, super-poser magician uses." Rolling his eyes, Kenny realised he should've expected this sort of response.

"Zatara?" Could be the only person she was referring to in all logic, he being perhaps the most well known magician in the world. Such perks came with being a member of the Justice League, of course.

Slumping down onto her bed, Henrietta sat, her elbows on her knees, head supported on her hands, looking at him ponderously. "Yeah, backwards words, just kill me now."

"How've you been?" He asked, as she reached into the folds of her gown and withdrew a cigarette and lighter.

She paused in bringing the cigarette to her lips, raising an eyebrow to him. "You never usually ask me that sort of shit… what's the matter?" She allowed herself a single laugh, before she lit her cigarette, took a satisfied drag and sighed sarcastically. "Getting lonely out in the cold, fighting the forces of darkness?"

Kenny humoured her as he stepped into the room further, sliding the window shut as he did so. "Very funny."

Not sated for teasing sarcasm, Henrietta hedged a smirk, drawling. "Does the mysterious, brooding hero need a shoulder to cry on, or maybe someone to help him pull up his tights?" She let out one long strand of smoke and laughed again, a laugh that sounded bitter, but only because it came from someone who believed laughing to be a post-dramatic, cynical pastime. Laughing for her, was never in delight, always in pseudo-sarcastic indulgence. "You're right, that is funny."

"You're the same as ever then." He observed blithely. "Conforming to non-conformity." He sent her back his own version of her sarcastic smirk, knowing his comment would set her off.

From her expression she no doubt recognised it as bait, but that still did not stop her from rising to meet it. "Fuck off, you know that's a heap of bullshit the preppy poser dickwads peddle to try and shame us. I'm goth, I'm not a fucking vamp-kid…" She purposefully turned her face away as she took another drag, pretending to be engrossed in examining the candles and books that cluttered her dresser. Nevertheless, she replied in a manner as genuine as only someone so jaded could muster. "I'm fine though, life still sucks and I wanna die every time my mom opens her stupid whore mouth, but I'm fine."

"Good to hear." As he nodded in reply, he caught her eyes washing over him, precipitating her next words.

"You're dripping rain all over my floor."

"Really?" He chuckled knowingly, "I hadn't noticed."

"Take your cape off and hang it over the curtain rail to dry." Even her hospitality seemed reluctant, but such was Henrietta Biggles everyday demeanour.

He did as such, and then stood there, feeling a little awkward for lack of his primary piece of costume. But significantly less damp and cold for it. "… How are you?" Henrietta returned his early question to him, sounding for all the world like someone who was completely unsure of how to be honestly kind. Conceit of a teenage goth? Perhaps, Kenny thought, but that was a part of Henrietta he understood, the uncertainty of interacting genuinely with people. It wasn't much of a problem for him, all of his own anxieties being taken up by other, more morbid facts about his life. But he supposed talking to a masked vigilante in one's bedroom late at night, didn't exactly constitute a normal conversation for most kids.

"… Disturbed." Mysterion's answer was truthful. He had come here to be honest with her, and it was Henrietta's advice and library that he had come to rely on in the past.

This little truthful word seemed to stir something in Henrietta, her eyes widened a little and her expression slackened to one of intrigue and sympathy. "Disturbed? Thats, dark." Her tone carrier that notion too, allured by his more than usually gothic demeanour.

"I had a conversation with someone… I don't know who they were, but they knew my name." He stepped closer to her, looking down at her to meet her eyes and convey how much this had unsettled him.

"Like… you're name, name?" She leaned back, gazing up at him, dark hazel eyes peering out from behind the tangled fringe of her black hair.

"Yes. They were asking strange questions, and then they just, said it." He wished he'd said that better, but there was really so little he could say about the event.

Tilting her head in thought, the gothic girl queried. "Who else knows your name?"

Mysterion could name all the people he'd ever told. Whether any of them remembered however, was another thing entirely. It had been a long time since he'd talked about such things with Stan, Kyle, Cartman and the others. "A small handful of people who've probably long since forgotten. It couldn't have been any of them, this voice is somehow connected to, or even a member of the Justice League."

"Justice League?" She perked up at the mention, as much as her air of cool indifference could allow. "Since when are you hanging our with those losers."

Letting out a long tired sigh, Kenny replied. "Long story."

"We've got all night." Henrietta drew her legs up onto the sheets and shuffled back along the bed to sit against the headboard. She sat crosslegged, and dressed in black, her hair falling around her, she almost disappeared against the darkly painted wall. She gestured for him to join her, so he did.

It took a while and he omitted certain bits of information, surgically avoiding mentions of his actual deaths. Throughout it all Henrietta sat, smoked, and listened.

At the end of it, her cigarette having been stubbed out long ago, she looked at him long and hard, before saying, appreciatively. "Holy shit, you're a real fucking superhero, huh?"

A little offended, Kenny met her with a sardonic look and said. "I always was."

"Yeah but, like…" Henrietta spoke faster than her thoughts could move, her round face working in idle contemplation she took a moment to find what she wanted to say before she continued. "Except no one but me was paying attention. You never even thought about them before now, what's… you're in Gotham?" The fact came back to her with a little quirk of realisation in her voice, as if something was being filed away.

"Yes."

"… huh… So you want me to look into this Dr. Fate crap. What was it? Lords of order, Nabu, Ancient Egypt?" Having processed the information, Henrietta was quick to pick upon the facts he needed her help with.

"That's what I got from the little Nelson let slip. And anything on who that voice could've been, or what they could've been angling for with their questions." They weren't particularly specific requests, but they'd done more with less, os Kenny hoped she might have something.

She tolled her neck lazily, saying. "I can probably find something, but I wouldn't hold out hope for anything on that voice. Too vague to get a good idea of anything about it."

That was in truth, all he had expected. "True, but still."

"Well, like I said, we've got all night." Smirking at him, Henrietta rose from the bed with a dreamlike motion, and drifted over to her bookshelves. "Help get some of these down."

He obeyed her instruction, retrieving several books that Henrietta seemed to think they needed. "Are you sure what we'll need will be in your collection?" It wasn't the first time he'd questioned her admittedly small library of magical paraphernalia.

He should've expected the reply. "Hey, my collection is very comprehensive. I've not got lots of books, but you don't know how much false crap gets printed. I have the books that matter. Besides, we've got the internet." Her response was defensive, and when she swiped up her laptop from the desk, Kenny prodded.

"You gonna google eldritch horrors or something?"

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes at him, as she lectured. "No, smart-ass, I'm going to look on the Miskatonic Archive site."

"Miskatonic." Something about that name seemed familiar to him, which is when he was reminded of something he'd heard his adoptive parents talking about. It was a place in Gotham, or near it anyway. "The university?"

"Yeah, you ought to have heard of it, it's just outside Gotham."

For the next span of hours the two of them sat about her room, books laid open and pages turning. Occasionally one of them would quiz the other, asking if they'd found anything, or if they could cross-reference something with another book. But overall it was dull work, made a little easier by the company. The smell of old books and cigarette smoke filled the space, the sound of rain pattering agains the window a constant companion. Candle light flickered across the yellowed pages, and the regular sound of parchment and paper shifting against itself became a relaxing accompaniment to their work.

Eventually, as the hours ticked over, Henrietta announced, albeit apprehensively. "This might be what you're looking for 'The Principle of the Pharaohs, Ancient Egyptian rites and rituals.' Professor Enoch Bowen, 1891. Publisher, blah blah blah. There's a bunch of others like this that seem promising, so I hope you like reading."

After taking a relived breath, Kenny resigned. "Not much else to do this summer…"

"Anything on this voice?" She asked him, glancing at the books that lay open around him. The one directly laid out at his feet being perhaps the most important book in her collection, a partial English translation of the Necronomicon itself. Something she had spared no expense in acquiring, something she had taken pages out of to give to Mysterion.

Henrietta watched his face closely as he stared intently at the pages, what was visible of it was pulled tight in frustrated concentration. "The problem is there's too much, about dreams that is. Dreamland, dreamquests, lucid, prophetic, everlasting, nightmare creatures, living nightmares, nightgaunts, theories, fables… so much shit to sift through… I keep coming back to this though; it's a greek god but for some reason it's shown up here too. Hypnos. Not much information in the Necronomicon at least, but there's something about it…" The tension in his face drooped, and his sky blue eyes slipped out of focus. "God of Sleep."

"Pass it here." Mysterion did as she asked, taking up the book in gentle hands and passing it too her, as gently as if it were a newborn child. So precious were the contents of it's pages, that Henrietta might as well have treated it as such.

"I feel like I'm trying to catch smoke." He said, still staring at the tome as his gothic confidant held it in her comforting hands.

"Or trying to remember a dream." Her appropriate observation caused him to lift his gaze to look at her. Mysterion found she was looking at him, an unreadable, yet soft expression on her dimly lit features.

"… Yeah." He said, and she broke their stare, her eyes setting to the familiar task of devouring the written word of long dead mystics.

Henrietta read over it several times, throughout which Kenny remained silent. As she read, a concerned look overtook her face. "… Hypnos is a greek God… I don't know why he's in the Necronomicon. Also, i don't remember having these pages in my copy."

"What are you saying." Henrietta's sleep deprived mind seemed to be making connection that his own word wearied brain wasn't.

"Mysterion." The look she sent him was so serious that he sat up straight. "If you've brought a fucking Eldritch Greek God into my fucking room-"

Seeing the conclusion she had jumped to, Kenny ventured. "Henrietta, I-"

But she cut across what he was about to say, and a fierce grin split her face. "Then you're the fucking best." Placing the book down in front of her, the goth girl spread her hands and looked around the room, taking on a respectful, beseeching tone of voice. "Hypnos! Lord of sleep? Are you here with us!?"

"… Uh…" It was taking him a while to figure out if she was being serious or not. "You're welcome?"

"Shh." She gestured at him briefly, before continuing sedately. "Sleeping one, master of the Dreamlands? Eternal, endless, wakeless. Hear me!"

It seemed she was being serious, so Kenny cut in with a stern voice. "Henrietta, if there was an outer god here then I think we'd know."

"You saying these pages just fucking appeared here then? I thought you were smarter than that." She objected, to which Mysterion did his best not to patronise, but provide a line of reason.

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the voice probably wasn't that of a god, but maybe someone who serves one. I doubt Hypnos, whatever it is, would bother with something that minor."

She let her hands fall back into her lap, looking at him irritably. "So what, some creep broke into my room?"

Patiently he tried to explain. "No. Maybe they just made it, appear there. Or maybe you just forgot you had it, it's only about a page. Just calm down, there's no eldritch horror here…" His voice levelled into a calming baritone, holding out an appeasing hand he gave her a look which spoke of confidence in what he said. If there was a god here, Kenny liked to think he would know.

Meeting his eyes for a few seconds, Henrietta eventually capitulated, tossing her head in a dismissive way and saying. "Hm. Whatever. Not like I care anyway."

From the window, where his now dry cape hung, and where, through the glass the soft amber light of very early morning was starting to peek through the half closed curtains, Mysterion realised just how long they'd been working. He ought to go back, he thought, reluctant to leave despite his tiredness. If he stayed maybe they would be able to find more information on this Hypnos figure. But Henrietta no doubt had things to do with her day, even if he hadn't. He consoled himself with the thought of perhaps visiting the Miskatonic University and asking to see their library, before he said. "I should probably go, sun's about to rise."

Seeming to realise the time as well, Henrietta suppressed a yawn, and instead ceded. "Alright."

Slowly he donned his cape, while she stacked the books on her bed for later reorganisation onto her shelves. When he had secured the clasp around his neck and the hood over his half-masked head, he turned his face to see her leaning against the side of the window next to him. Her face was half cast in the breaching rays of daylight, and she clung to her violet curtain for warmth, her bare arms were as pale as chalk, and as he opened the window she shivered slightly. Mysterion put a leg up on the windowsill to begin his exit, when a tentative phrase slipped out of her mouth. "Hey…" Her voice was not a whisper, but somehow it seemed as quiet as the snowy morning outside. "That voice isn't the only one who knows your name."

Her smirk was unbearably smug, and he returned a questioning smile as he said, amusedly. "… You think you know who I am."

Her hair was ruffled by the breeze, and half hiding her face it seemed to soak up any daylight that landed on her. Taking in a slow breath of the Colorado air, Henrietta began softly. "I noticed a while ago… years now… I stopped seeing this kid around town. Later I heard from his friends that he and his siblings had been moved to an orphanage in Denver… When that kid left, he took Mysterion with him… I always missed seeing that stupid bright orange parka running around in the snow… but I'm glad Mysterion still takes the time to visit, even if it is only because you need something… However disturbed you are, if you need someone to help pull up your tights, you can always come see me… Kenny McKormick." She never once took her eyes away from his, and as he vanished from her room into the snow of his hometown, Kenny was reassured that even if he didn't have anyone to rely on in Gotham, as Mysterion or as himself, at least he had someone he could trust here.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

 _A/N: April fools? By ny timezone at least. 3 days, a new record! I guess that's what a man can do when he has time. Bit of a cheat anyway, I didn't write the whole thing in 3 days, parts of the conversation between Kenny and Henrietta I've had rattling around inside my head for awhile. Thanks for all the kind words and advice y'all reviewers, I aim to please, and thanks again for reading!_

— _Faff_


	17. Blood Loss

Try to Remember

Chapter 17: Blood loss.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

The night was a warm one, midsummer was fully underway and even though Gotham tended to be lukewarm even during the hottest of seasons, tonight was a night where even the moon shone hot. The sky, stained red by the bygone sunset, gave way to that self same moon as it came over the opposite half of the gothic sprawl.

With car headlights and streetlamp's twinkling below him, Mysterion rested atop a particularly nondescript apartment building. So undefined was this building, that the only thing which seemed to set it apart from the rest of the skyline, was his own humble shadow, crouched upon its eaves.

Binoculars held up to his eyes, the hooded guardian was in the process of observing the equally ordinary building across the street. A building that would've also been utterly unremarkable, if it weren't for the balaclava wearing, gun-toting figures who were stalking about on it's roof.

Mysterion had begun his night with the intention of heading uptown to where, as a live news report had told him, infamous madman 'The Joker' was robbing some sort of charity fundraising event. En route however, Kenny's keen midnight eyes had picked out the cabal of black-clad bruisers utterly failing to look inconspicuous.

His immediate thought was, why bother breaking into somewhere so unremarkable? It looked like any other building on the block, some sort of rundown office space for rent seemed to be the purpose, judging by what mysterion could glimpse through the windows. So what were these four guys doing waiting around on it's roof, guns at the ready; two with machine guns, two with pistols. What were they going to do, and who were they waiting for.

When the sound of a helicopter approached, Kenny scuttled away into the darkness of the fire escape, as the black chopper came around in the air, swaying to a stop over the building the four individuals were occupying.

Risking a closer look, Mysterion retook his earlier position and brought the binoculars back up to his eyes. The helicopter, glistening black against the post sunset burn, hovered for a few seconds, before slowly descending onto the rooftop. Immediately, the four lurkers ducked their heads and scurried over to the opening doors of the vehicle.

From within came five new individuals, one of whom was dressed like the rooftop goons, but three of whom were being corralled and bundled ungracefully out into the night. They were struggling hard, kicking and thrashing around, but unable to get free or make a sound due to the fact that they were quite obviously bound at the hands and feet, and with black bags over their heads it plainly earmarked them as unwilling guests to whatever this group was planning. Bar the pilot, one other person stepped out of the helicopter. A tall man dressed in a charcoal grey suit, with a colourful blue tie offsetting the drab suit. By the angle at which he stooped to step out of the helicopter, keeping his head out of the way of the machine's lethal blades, Kenny was unable to get a good look at his face. Then he turned and waved the pilot away, before shouting something at the masked goons and pointing towards the rooftop entrance to the building.

Shouldering the struggling hostages, the kidnappers, now five in number, not including the fellow in the suit and tie, made their way into the building. When they had vanished inside, Mysterion leapt into action. Unloosing his grapple line, he performed the practiced motion of spinning the hook around, before releasing it across the chasm between the two buildings. The rusty hook arced through the air, clattering down on the roof opposite. With a few experimental tugs Kenny assured himself that the line would hold him, before he dropped off the ledge and swung across to his new destination, telling himself that if this Joker character was really as dangerous as the Gothamites said he was, that Batman would be dealing with that problem uptown. This however, required immediate attention.

Instead of proceeding straight to the roof however, Kenny took a more sedate pace for the purpose of glancing in at the windows he passed, checking if the people he'd just seen would emerge onto any of the open plan office floors.

He caught a glimpse of shadows through the window three floors down from the roof, but not willing to risk being seen as he cracked the window open, Mysterion quickened his climbing, safe with the knowledge of where the kidnappers had stopped.

On the roof he found the fire escape door that led inside had already been broken open, a clumsy hack job no doubt performed by one of the four individuals he'd spotted in the first place. Taking a deep breath to calm his slowly boiling nerves, Kenny prepared himself for a fight; outnumbers but with the element of surprise. He could do this.

He made sure the door closed as softly as it could behind him, before he took a look down the stairwell that now presented itself. Checking his equipment he reminded himself of today's arsenal; one smoke grenade (special courtesy of Ned), two lines of firecrackers, and his pistol. Those were his combative options, aside from that it was only the gear he used to traces Gotham by rooftop. Once more he reminded himself that there were three hostages; he needed to be careful.

Moving slowly down three floors, Mysterion saw no sign of the kidnappers. Even as he listened at the door leading into said floor, he heard and saw no trace of their presence. Inching the door open and peering out into the hallway beyond, also provided him with no clue as to their existence here. His brow furrowed in mounting unease, as he huddled against the deeper shadows of the wall and moved along the corridor. All lights were off, and the interior of this dull building appeared to affirm his previous assumptions on looking through the windows. It was a series of office spaces, mostly for small business to rent. But this floor in particular, judging by the signs on some of the doors, was solely under the ownership of one outlet, The Gotham Grapevine. It was a newspaper, one Kenny himself had seen his own foster mother reading. From what little he'd gleaned it was nothing but an everyday tabloid, printing the latest celebrity gossip alongside advertisements for this or that vacation. If the general depressed design of their offices was anything to go by, the Gotham Grapevine had fallen on hard times.

Using his own internal compass, Kenny oriented himself towards the side of the building he had only just been climbing. Logic dictated that the rooms on that side of the building were where he would find these criminals, so that was the direction he swept the corridors in. Taking a little time to stop and listen at each door, it was inevitable Kenny would soon find where they had sequestered themselves.

From behind a set of double doors came the sounds of heavy objects being shifted across a carpeted floor. There was occasionally a hushed voice, several urgent tones cutting across each other as they went about whatever business it was they had here.

Cursing his own stupidity, Mysterion realised he should've taken more time at the window, got a better idea of the rooms he was about to bust into. But there wasn't time to go back now. Taking the smoke grenade from his belt, Mysterion weighed it in his hand. The little he could recall of the rooms interior was that it was big, open plan, and filled with desks. He didn't know where the kidnappers, or the hostages would be. Lamenting his lack of intel and preparation for this task, he momentarily considered using the community Batman had given him to call for aid. He quickly dismissed that thought; he'd succeeded in endeavours like this before, he hadn't needed backup then and didn't need it now. Even if it would've helped immensely, even if the Bat might've been willing to provide it.

Pulling the pin and cracking the door open, Mysterion rolled the canister in. A few seconds later a sudden hissing sound pierced the near silence within, followed by an upraising of voices, determinable from the gabble were phrases like "Boss!?" "It's Batman!" and "Oh shit."

Giving the smoke a brief moment to spread, Mysterion flung the doors open with force. They crashed against the walls and the voices within the now smoke filled space erupted with shouts of indistinct aggression. A foray of gunfire opened up out of the darkness, muzzle flashes sparking in the dark folds of smoke, and bullets hailing through the now open doorway.

But Mysterion had expected that and compensated for it in his entrance. He'd swung around the doorframe, close to the ground and moving as quickly as he could. As such he avoided the burst of bullets and found his way to a nearby desk, which he proceeded to hide under as the earsplitting cacophony stopped.

As the smoke billowed heavily into the air, Mysterion cast his eyes around the lower half of this room, searching beneath the fog for the legs of these attackers. He spotted a pair not far off, along with a few that were slowly being obscured by the smoke.

Taking action before the smoke made his own vision even more difficult, Kenny darted out from beneath the desk, snapping like a snake over to another covering, before lashing out at the other side, remaining level with his targets ankles the whole time. With both hands Mysterion wrenched the goons feet out from under him, and with a terrified shout the man came down with a thump. Cries of worry went up from the others, but Kenny was already upon his prey, pinning them to the ground and proceeding to threw a hefty and precise punch at just the right part of his targets head. With a whimpering cry his first opponent was down for the count.

Things were already going better than he had hoped, as he snatched away the man's machine gun and stowed it under a nearby desk, before darting off to a hiding place under a similar table.

The rest of the criminals were arguing about whether or not to open fire, go ask their boss for help, or to just throw caution to the wind and spray the place with bullets. The counter points in all these arguments set Kenny's curiosity ablaze. In any normal circumstance Mysterion would expect 'the boss' to have come to investigate the sporadic gunfire. However one of the kidnapper's argued that 'interrupting the boss' was always a bad idea. Kenny steeled himself and decided that whatever 'the boss' was doing, it was something that needed interrupting.

Their arguing nevertheless provided Mysterion with an excellent opportunity to locate them more precisely. There were two standing in the centre of the room, and seemed to be the more enthusiastic about simply opening fire and letting all hell loose. But there was one of their number who stood off in the corner where the smoke was less dense, who seemed to be a lot more wary about just shooting up this office.

The duo seemed to be the best point of attack next, Kenny reasoned, slithering from hiding place to smoky nook with nary a sound. When he was close enough to see the vague silhouettes of the arguing kidnappers, Mysterion withdrew two items from his pockets. His lighter, and a line of firecrackers.

As he flicked the catch and held the flame to his fireworks, Kenny heard one of the kidnappers freeze and say. "Wait, what was-" But his words were taken from him as Mysterion lobbed the firecrackers over to the other side of the duo, where they fizzled and exploded, snapping and banging with impunity.

The two goons yelped in shock and let off a few panicked shots in the direction of the noise, as they stumbled backwards away from the bright lights and sharp sound. They walked right into his arms, gripping them by the nape of their necks Kenny leapt up and between them, nearly lifting the two off their feet before forcing them over. They lost balance and Mysterion's gloved hands guided the faces directly into the floor. One let go of his gun, the assault rifle skittering off over some nearby desks, while the other's pistol arm was trapped beneath his body.

Delivering that same textbook blow to the pistol carrying criminal, Kenny brought his elbow up and around as he rose from the floor, catching the other man directly in the stomach as they made an attempt to stand and scurry away. One of his two victims subdued, Mysterion flew round and followed up his staggering blow with another to the chest, aimed to further deprive this opponent of breath, and a final one across the temple which sent him too clattering to the ground.

The split second he remained standing seemed to be too long, as from the corner came a quick succession of gunshots. Mysterion hit the floor instantly, checking himself for any wounds. One bullet had grazed his should it seemed, a red streak across his shoulder showed that, but the other bullets seemed to have been fired in the quaking hands of a shaken man who had just seen his allies drop, so they had thankfully missed his head. Now Kenny realigned himself in the room, sneaking around the desks to where the gunfire had come from.

"Shit, shit, shit." The man's voice, whispered and afraid was accompanied by the sound of his hands jostling with the magazine of his pistol. Clumsy, Mysterion thought pragmatically, as he lunged out of the smoke and darkness to welcome this criminal to the silent sleep of unconsciousness.

Locating the room with the hostages and 'the boss' was not difficult it seemed. Within the open plan space was a single door, a window paned with frosted glass taking up it's upper portion and a bronze placard attached to it that read. 'Norman O. Sullivan, Editor in Chief'.

Readying himself to leap out of the way of gunfire and goodness knows what, Mysterion pushed the door open. Inside he found a cluttered office, containing a few filing cabinets, a desk, a small window, and three hostages tied up in the corner. You know, the regular office supply kind of stuff. Behind the desk, in the process of opening the window, was the man in the grey suit.

"You always get here early and ruin the-" Then the owner of the voice turned full face towards him, and froze in confused astonishment. "Surprise?" The man's face was chalk white, as if it had been bleached. His blood red lips were spread wide in a gaudy smile that was so large, so broad that even the most minute of movements displayed a gallery of expressions. Right now the corner of his mouth was lightly twisted in displeasure, but he grinned nonetheless, seeming all to stuck in confusion for anything more. If his green hair and obvious, copious application of make up wasn't clue enough, then his eyes were the final nail in the coffin. This man was The Joker. Those eyes, that had blinked out from a thousand television screens, the had looked out from a hundred thousand photographs in the newspapers, those wide, green as acid, and mad beyond reckoning, were truly the eyes of Gotham's most notorious villain.

Kenny had seen pictures of the man, of course. Heard about the crime sprees and crazed criminal exploits, but he'd never gone so far as to consider the man anything more than just that; a man. A mad man. But here, in the most mundane of places, wearing a cheap, charcoal grey suit and sky blue tie, standing behind a desk looking for all the world like he belonged there, was something far more than just a man. It was the eyes that told him so, the venomous green orbs almost spiralling in their utter fixedness, staring at him like he was the only thing in the world. Then when The Joker flicked his eyes away to glance at the three hogtied hostages sitting in the corner, Kenny noticed that this was the way The Joker looked at everything. Complete clarity of focus, a level of effortless attention that was, in anything but a panther or vicious predator of the animal kingdom, terrifying.

The meeting being unexpected for the both of them, Mysterion had time to think about his answer, if he even answered at all. Sadly he didn't take that time and spoke without thinking, as he so often did. "Aren't you supposed to be fundraising?"

Joker blinked rapidly, computing the almost amiable response before quickly replying. "That thing? Ah, just a decoy, a little shake 'em up. Fun for all the family! Also, who the hell are you?" His voice was something to unsettle as well, animated and vibrant, running up and down in pitch and range at a rate only accomplished by children, or children's cartoon characters. When he was happy, he was ecstatic. When he was curious, call him Sherlock Holmes. When he wanted an answer, as he was now, he did verbal and tonal somersaults to get that answer.

Mysterion did not give The Joker his answer. "If that's fun for all the family, what is this?" He had been expecting some low rent mob boss, some opportunistic Inzerillo or conniving Marcone, someone who wasn't infamously insane. Someone who hadn't eluded, confounded and played The Batman for a fool for a good number years.

"This…?" In a brief moment the Joker seemed uncertain what his new acquaintance was referring to, before he shot another glance at the struggling captives in the corner, and put two and two together. "Oh. This is more of a personal business opportunity."

"Right…" Mysterion drawled, keeping a close eye on the clown even as he examined the hostages in his peripheral. They were slumped against the wall, the black bags removed rom their heads to show their terrified, bruised faces. Two men and one woman, all of whom seemed in various stages of fear.

"Ugh, just look…!" The Joker rolled his eyes and threw something at the vigilante. Mysterion had to restrain himself from throwing his body out of harms way, being that there was no trusting what this man might throw at him, both literally and figuratively. The object proved not to be a bomb, knife, or otherwise lethal projectile, but a rolled up newspaper. Kenny held it dumbly for a second, not taking his eye of the Joker. "Look!? Look what they printed about my queen of hearts!"

Keeping a close watch on the pale faced lunatic, Mysterion unrolled the paper, and perused it's front page. It was a copy of The Gotham Grapevine, dated August 15th of this year. Immediately Kenny saw what had grabbed the Joker's attention, and the puzzle pieces began to slide together.

The article read…

' _WHORE-LEY QUINN?_

 _Does the Joker get his jollies knowing that every dime store criminal gets his rocks off over a pin-up of the clown princess? In recent villainous escapades the Joker's ingenue, Harley Quinn (formerly Dr. Harleen Quinzel PhD) has been seen sporting attire that this reporter would describe as anything but decent. Emphasis on the Butt-'_

The picture that the article bordered was, needless to say, a little less than modest. Mysterion was hardly one to keep up with the fashion choices of any person, hero or villain, but this photograph made Kenny McKormick start to think that such a pasttime might be worthwhile. Apprehensive of letting the Joker see what he really thought of that tight-fitting corset Quinn was wearing in said photoprah, he instead expertly essayed his expression to one of indifference. Having seen enough, Kenny tossed the paper back at the Joker, who caught it, and with a balled up fist began to shake the tabloid around, shouting. "Trash! Trash I tell you! I had half a mind to write a stern letter of complaint!"

"So why didn't you?"

Joker took the question to heart, throwing the pair down on the desk and slamming his fist on it several times in violent protest. Then he focused his stare on Mysterion and appear to be about to launch into some maniacal diatribe, when his expression changed tack dramatially. The shift was so sudden, so sharp, it was almost funny. Now the very picture of seriousness, Joker stood up straight and addressed Mysterion as if he was greeting him in a job interview. "Because I had a better idea. Why not turn this awful unfounded insult, into an opportunity? Branch out? I've been running this game for a while now, and I thought it was about time 'Joker Entertainment Inc LLC' took it's first steps into the wide world of journalism and news media!" Stretching his hands out in front of him, Joker almost looked like he was casting his gaze over the night sky, despite the fact he was actually looking at the ceiling of a rather dingy office. "With that very first step being to squash out any and all of the garbage competition." He didn't so look at them, but his blatant reference made the three bound civilians squirm and whimper.

"And the three hostages?" Mysterion added, bracing himself for an unpleasant answer.

With a genial smile the Joker corrected him. "I prefer to think of them as freelance reporters."

"So what about your 'freelance reporters' then?"

"They used to work at this rag." The Joker's voice had pivoted again, this time to a grumbling grouchy tone. Before again his bipolar attitude swivelled and he became once more the merry vision of a happy, smiling clown. "Now they work for me! I figured, what better way to get to grips with the media racket, than to really pick the brains of three of it's former frontrunners."

The obvious question needed to be asked, so Mysterion indulged him. "… Who wrote that piece about Quinn?"

"She wrote it. He approved it. And he took the picture!" Each one was listed off and identified with a fierce jab of the Joker's finger.

"You don't think you're, overreacting?" Kenny tried, the understatement of the century tasting strange in his mouth. But keeping the Joker talking seemed to be working remarkably well. The only problem was, Mysterion didn't have an end game to this stalling tactic.

"Overreacting!?" Screeched the Clown Prince, eyes bulging out of their sockets.

"Yeah." Was Mysterion's sedate, patient response.

This time the madman remained on his euphoric high of outraged emotion, detailing. "How would you like it if some bunch of greasy creepers took photos of your girl!? Huh!? Oh don't tell me you've got Batman syndrome." Crossing his arms and letting out an exasperated sigh, the Joker gave Mysterion a patronising look.

Kenny, for his part, could only look confused. "Batman syndrome?"

"Batman?" Joker began, before holding out a hand as one would if they were indicating someone's height. "Tall guy? Mask, cape, dresses like a bat? Old friend of mine, you know him?"

Playing along again, Mysterion mused dully. "Yeah, i think I know the guy."

"Yeah, well I've tried to set him up on blind dates a few times, like a good friend should! But it's never gone well, that man just doesn't want love." Not wanting to think about Batman of all people on a blind date, let alone with someone of The Joker's choosing, Mysterion made to reply when they were interrupted by a terrified, angry shout coming from one of the hostages.

"Are you just gonna stand around talking or are you gonna get us outta here!?"

Joker's head snapped round to glare at the man, who cowered under the force of his gaze. "Hey, shush! We're trying to have a-" The man's impatience and terror was, it seemed, as good an opening as any from Mysterion's point of view.

Rushing forwards Kenny reached over the desk and grabbed the Joker by the lapels, and using all his strength, pulled him across the desk. As the Joker gave a bark of surprise, Kenny crouched down and directed the man's body over his head and towards the open door behind him. The Joker, enjoying the experience it seemed, let out a joyous "Wahoo!" As he sailed back into the main office floor.

Far from being battered or beaten, the Joker rolled with this sudden movement, and pirouetted to a standing position, facing Mysterion with an eager expression. "You're a sneaky one aren't ya? I like that!"

The knife came out of nowhere and darted through Mysterion's guard in a split second, too quick for him to react. But what the Joker didn't know, was that to Mysterion; knives were nothing. So if the mad clown expected him to go down he had another thing coming. Kenny drew back, wrapping his hands around the Jokers wrist and prying the knife from his grip as he removed it from his stomach. In the motion, Mysterion slid his gloved hands to two distinct points on the Joker's arm, one around the join between hand and wrist, the other at the joint where the forearm met upper arm. Then the knee came up from below to snap the wrist.

Joker knew what was happening as fast as he did though, and as Kenny drew his leg back to bring the break home, Joker's own foot came in and kicked him where the knife had pieced him.

Mysterion could waistband an unholy amount of pain, but he still had to recoil with the force of the kick. The knife flipped up in the air between them as they broke apart, and that fraction of a moment, they both made the same choice. They came crashing back into each other as both grasped for the briefly airborne blade.

Joker was the one whose aim was true and his pale nimble hands seized hold of the weapon, immediately as they collided together, Joker took a hold of him with his free hand and brought the knife down into the space between his neck and collarbone, a triomphant smile on his face. To the Joker's surprise, Kenny reared back his head and then snapped it forwards, a resounding crack issuing as forehead met forehead.

Stumbling backwards the Joker once again relinquished the knife, instead of being in the air though, this time it was still embedded in it's victim. Keen to use it to his advantage, with a harsh breath Mysterion drew it out of it's fleshy sheet. Blood began to stream out of th wound, some important vein no doubt, not that it mattered to him. Indeed the only difference in him was the darkening of his shirt as it became stained with his own blood, appearing almost black in the moonlit office.

Wasting no time, Mysterion lunged forwards, reversing his grip on it into a military style with one swift motion. As he leapt forward, his opponent darted to the side, moving quickly between two rows of desks. The Joker made fast work of reaching voer one desk to a pot of stationary on an adjacent one, and as Mysterion descended on him with his own knife, the Joker came back around with a stapler in his hand.

Mysterion made the gambit of a downwards diagonal slash, slicing a clean cut through the Joker's dark clothes. However, as little as Kenny reacted to the atack, the Joker matched him for laissez-faire.

As soon as he made his attack, the Joker's choice of weapon made more sense, as the pale faced clown tugged Mysterion's hood down over his face. The next thing Kenny felt was the solid smack of metal against his chin as the Joker stapled his hood to his head.

Letting out a bark of anger, Mysterion back peddled, blindly swinging the knife in front of him with one hand, as he wrenched his hood back with the other. The precious seconds were lost, but in the next few Kenny had pulled the hood back off his head, the staple that had impaled itself in his tearing out a patch of skin on the left side of his lower lip. Blood now began to trail down his face, giving him the appearance of some raging carnivore that had just bitten off a mouthful of bloody meat.

Now able to see again, Kenny's eyes were presented with only the view of the empty office space, the Joker had disappeared. When he felt a heavier metal object smash him across the back of the head, Kenny realised that no, of course the Joker hadn't disappeared.

Kenny's ensuing shout was borne more out of rage than pain, as he span around and came face to face with the Joker once more. Leaping over the computer monitor the lunatic had clobbered him with, Kenny once again dove in with the knife. But the Joker was ready for him, sliding one foot back and leaning just the right amount to avoid the thrust. Then with a flurry of movement the Joker brought something up, under, and over Kenny's arm. It was a long tangle of cables. With a motion that gave much more force than Kenny anticipated, the Joker levered against him and flipped him over and onto one of the desks in a move Mysterion could recognise as a belonging to the martial art of Judo specifically.

Mysterion landed with a great thump, the breath being expelled from him immediately as he impacted the plastic surface. He didn't hit it with his full body weight, otherwise Kenny felt like the entire desk might collapse beneath him. But maybe that was unfortunate, as the Joker used his surprising strength to stretch Kenny's knife arm out across the surface, using the coil of cables that bound him right at the should to manipulate the nerves and workings of his joint, not enough to do anything serious, but just enough to restrict his movement.

The Joker then leant against Mysterion, using the elbow of his right arm to keep pressure on the wound in his collar and supply enough pain to keep him down.

"You're a pesky one, let's put an end to that, eh?" The Joker was out of breath, clearly, but sounded about as enthusiastic as a man could sound. He was like a mad child, or a ravenous hyena.

Kicking a leg up onto the desk, the Joker pinned Kenny's forcibly outstretched wrist to the desk, still leaning his body against Mysterion so that movement was incredibly difficult. The Joker's face was so close, that Kenny could see his nigh demonic face in minute detail, the red bloodshot area around his eyes as they bulged, the flaring nostrils, he was so close he could feel the man's breath, so close he could feel his heartbeat; frantic and fast, like a hummingbird.

Now Kenny was left with a choice; lose his arm and give the Joker something to write home about, or not lose his arm. It would be easy to pull the bait and stab; losing his arm and catching the Joker of guard while he was figuring out what to do with an arm. But somehow Kenny didn't fancy taking the easy way out this time. Many were the times where he had treated his life like what he knew it to be; nothing but a joke. But when the few times crept up on him that he felt like showing the forces of the universe that he could fight against them, well, those times were special.

Tonight was one of those times.

As the Joker manoeuvred to amputate his limb, Kenny drew upon all his strength to push the man up and off of him. It didn't yield much except the Joker and he lifting off the desk for a fraction of a few seconds. But throwing the heavy weight of the clown off completely, hadn't been his aim. As the two bodies came back down on the desk, their collective mass prevailed, the plastic office furniture gave way.

They descended a groaning, splintering sound, accompanied by the Joker's mad yelp of surprise and Mysterion's guttural shout of exertion. Kenny had been banking on this though, and twisted his arm and body free of the Joker as the desk gave way beneath them, so when they both toppled to the floor atop many pointed and uncomfortable bits of desk, Mysterion was free to extricate himself and roll off to the side.

When he'd returned to his feet, Kenny came around to see the Joker had gotten back up in a similarly fast fashion. "You can take a beating, i'll give you that." The clown prince ground out, whatever humour in him having been dampened by Mysterion's refusal to show pain.

"Yeah. Can you?" Kenny seethed back, and in the moment where the Joker looked taken aback by the aggressive promise of violence, Mysterion stowed the knife and came at him with fists raised.

Blades out of the picture, Mysterion brought his own fighting style to bear, his heavy, dirty, fighting style. The first punch caught the Joker in his jaw, much to the clown's surprise it seemed, as he careened backwards letting out a shocked and yammering laugh.

Mysterion's other fist came down on the top of Joker's head, while his right knee snapped up in quick succession, sending the Joker down the back up at a brutal rate. The opening flourish had taken the clown prince off guard, but as he readapted his footing, Kenny came fist to fist with the man who had tortured Gotham for so long.

There was blood staining both of them, not only Kenny's since his second blow had caught the Joker across the nose at just that delicate angle which easily, messily, breaks it.

Their fight went on for longer than Mysterion could ever remember fighting for. Nothing on the streets, in the back alleys and bars, nothing in the gym, in the clubs and classes, on the rooftops, beneath the streets, had ever pushed him this much. The Joker threw punches and kicks at him that he recognised, not only from many different classic martial arts styles, but from moves that he threw himself. Through it all the Joker laughed, and not just a single laugh, but a palette of insane guffaws. Short sharp Ha's, longer, deeper Hoo's, sharp and childlike Hee's, snorts and chuckles, booms and wheezes.

Until, out of nowhere, the Joker said. "Sorry to cut this short, but at least you can say you went out with a-"

There was the unmistakable sound of a gun being unholstered, but as the mad clown brought a pistol around to fire on the hooded teenager, he found that the same had been done to him. Mysterion, bloodied and bruised, pointed an unwavering hand towards him, gun cocked and ready to fire a bullet that would sink right into the Joker's skull. An action which the Joker himself mirrored.

Time practically froze as they stood there, mere feet from each other, gun's trained on the other's head. Mysterion's luger to the Joker's revolver.

"Bang?" The end of his thought twisted with confusion while a myriad of emotions played across his face. The Joker tilted his head, mouth twisting first in befuddlement, then thinning in annoyance, before finally settling on a wry smirk of appreciative amusement.

Mysterion made no reply, the half of his face that was visible showing the bloody streak from where he'd been stapled, and an offset jaw that may have been fractured.

"I wonder though…" The Joker began to move, slow graceful steps, like a dancer, although each one was deliberately moving away from Mysterion. Who in turn matched him step for step. "Would you actually shoot me?"

"Believe me, I really want to." His response seemed to clash with what the Joker expected from him. It provoked another bout of laughter, throughout which his aim never moved a inch.

"Oh, I could get used to this. You know, the guy I usually do this with isn't much for conversation, bit of a downer if you ask me. He won't even let me meet his kid! Can you believe that? Rude, just plain rude."

"Somehow I doubt you're allowed within five miles of anyone's kid."

"Oh oh oh! Now now, don't you go being rude too."

"What's the matter? Can't take a joke?"

"You wouldn't know a joke if it hit you in the head at two thousand five hundred feet a second."

"Why don't you put that to the test."

"Oh, I like the sound of that."

"On the count of three?"

"One."

"Two."

"Wait! On three or after three?"

"Three." Immediately Kenny threw himself sideways, diving behind a nearby desk and letting off a shot not intended to hit the Joker, just to cause him to react similarly. At the same time he heard the Joker's gun fire.

In the seconds where Mysterion landed there behind his cover, and the seconds where he decided what to do, he heard the door groan open and slam shut. That spurred his next instinctive action; he came to his feet, twisting to a standstill, his gun aimed at where the Joker had been. With a quick sweep of his electric blue eyes, Kenny took in the immediate area eager not to be fooled. But it seemed the Joker had truly disappeared this time, and its even the few seconds head start the clown prince had, Mysterion knew he wouldn't catch him.

A minute later, after he had caught his breath, found Mysterion looking at the knife in his hand. In the wooden hilt of the small switchblade was engraved a small smiling face. Stepping back into the smaller office, he made his way over to the hostages and kneeling down, slipped the blade through the ropes that bound them.

The three of them watched him warily and didn't say a word, each one rubbing at the red marks on their wrists where the bindings had scraped their skin raw. Still none of them knew what to say, or whether to say anything at all. Until he turned to leave with nothing but the words. "Call the police, they should get here before any of the others wake up."

"Who are you!" It was the man who had interrupted before, he was broad and stocky, with a bristly moustache jutting out over his top lip.

Now that the adrenaline was slipping away, Kenny was beginning to feel the wound he had received from the Joker. Numerous cuts and bruises, no doubt a few broken and fractured bones, along with the larger knife wounds in his collar and stomach. It was the blood loss more than anything, he had run around with missing limbs before, but even that was something he couldn't do forever. So his reply came in the form of one word, as he swept out of the room.

"Mysterion."

"Wait! We need to know-" The rest of what the man said faded into the distance, as Kenny picked up his pace upon leaving the office, crossing the now distraught workspace with long strides.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

The red and blue lights of police cruisers flashed far below them, and the two caped figures stood looking down on it from a building further along the street. Out of sight, but perhaps not out of mind for the police officers, victims, and perpetrators that swarmed around the vehicles.

Batman had showed up so quickly, Mysterion could almost believe he had been waiting for him. Leaning against a protruding air vent, Kenny inquired. "How'd you know he was here?"

"Quinn's a fast talker." Once again Batman's expressiveness left much to be desired, but when silence hung between them there was the tingling sense of things being left unsaid.

"You were at that fundraiser?" The question was rhetorical, and Mysterion's next musing carried with it a weight of knowing sarcasm that on a good day he would've held back. But bleeding and bruised, Kenny didn't care too much for conversational niceties right now. "Figures. I guess tonight would end up with us running into each other, however it played out. I was heading there too, when I saw this shit-show."

Regarding him with a stern eye, Batman told him. "You shouldn't have taken on the Joker alone."

"I can handle a clown." He replied, absent-mindedly thumbing at a bloody gash in his sleeve.

"Joker isn't any ordinary clown." Batman's voice was serious, which wasn't anything new. What was different however was the heaviness with which he said it, resigned and quite possibly regretful.

On that point Kenny felt he had to concede. "Yeah, I guess you're right." That fight had been one of the longest and most enduring, he had constantly gotten a sense that the Joker could've delivered to him a killing blow, but held back, going instead for smaller, but no less debilitating injuries. On any other person it would've rendered them incapacitated in no time flat, the accumulation of dozens of cuts and stab wounds. But in Mysterion it merely invoked a sense of irritation and anger; the blood loss would eventually put him into a state of unconsciousness, but like with any injury, it would take a while to affect him, unless he let it carry him away. "I didn't know it was him at first anyway."

"Would you have called for backup even if you had?" Batman's question was more familial than Kenny had expected. Since their last encounter he'd been expecting his next meeting with the Bat to involve at least some discussion of the events at the tower of fate, or his refusal of Keny Nelson's offer, or even his true identity. But tonight's troubles seemed to have allayed those queries for now.

To his question however, Mysterion didn't see any reason to give anything but the truth. "No."

"Why not?"

"Who am I gonna call?" Shaking his head in exasperation, Mysterion gestured at the caped crusader with a gloved hand. "You? Fat chance." The time to broach the subject it seemed, was now, as Kenny continued to complain. "Give you another opportunity to try and needle information out of me, give Nelson another chance to try and convince me to hand over my soul or whatever the fuck."

"Nelson doesn't want that." Batman held up a hand to stop any further tirade from the younger hero, and began to speak openly. "Neither do I. But from where we stand you're dangerous, more than dangerous. You're unknown. And Kent is desperate…" There was a lowness and personal truthfulness to the Bat's voice that stalled Kenny's rising disregard and indignation with the whole state of affairs. "He's an old man. Passing on the mantle of Dr. Fate isn't just something he can do, it's something he must do. That Helmet is a part of him, back in the days of the Justice Society of America, Kent Nelson wore that helmet to war. He's a hero, and he doesn't want any harm to come to you."

Batman's final statement was somewhat sobering for Kenny, who heaved a sigh and replied. "… I get it. He wants to pass the torch before it's too late. I get it, I do. I'm just not sure it's a torch I should carry." Which was true, his refusal of the sorcerer's offer wasn't in any part due to Nelson himself, it was to do with what accepting that offer would mean for his future. The fact that Nelson had fought in world war two, operating as Dr. Fate was a startling truth. If he were to become Dr. Fate, what would be required of him? Right now, as Mysterion, he had no responsibility outside of his own desires. He protected people because it was the right thing to do, because it meant keeping Karen safe, because it meant finding out what he was. What would happen to that duty if he became this avatar of Fate that Nelson had spoken of, this conduit for a being he knew next to nothing about. It was a daunting prospect.

Batman seemed to realise this himself. "It's a lot of pressure for someone your age."

"You can say that again…" Somehow the inference to his age mattering in this didn't bother Kenny, perhaps it was the blood loss, or perhaps it was the fact that it was true. The honesty that now lay between them led Kenny to ask his next question, one that burned with anxious curiosity. "Do you… Do you know who I am?"

After a little silence, Batman admitted. "… No."

"But you could find out if you wanted to?" Kenny pursued, although his tone was not overly concerned.

The Dark Knight's reply illustrated to him what he had already known, in the back of his mind. "I could."

Mysterion gave a brief grunt of amused admittance, of course the Bat could find out. Was he lying about having given in to that urge to discover his identity? Somehow Mysterion didn't think so, but that begged the question. "So they didn't tell you?"

"Who didn't?" Batman's uncertainty proved another startling fact to him, one he had to confirm before jumping to.

"The person I spoke to at the Hall of Justice."

Batman's eyes narrowed as he seemed to come to his own conclusions. "… Kent Nelson is a stubborn man. We asked him who he'd called, but he wouldn't say."

"So you don't have any idea who it was?" That voice hadn't told Batman, and assumedly Black Canary, and maybe even Nelson, who he was. It was a two person secret, held unwillingly, gained unknowingly. It was fucking infuriating, and Kenny's tone displayed that appropriate amount of resigned annoyance.

"I have ideas, but no way to tell if any are accurate." Batman's lack of answers drew another heavy sigh from him, as Mysterion pushed off of the wall and stepped towards the Bat.

"I know that feeling. So the only way for me to really find out, is to talk to Nelson." It was seeming more and more inevitable as time went on, here on this rooftop standing across from Batman, the elusive hero who knew as little as he did, Kenny knew he needed to talk to Nelson and Dr. Fate.

"Yes. Nelson is currently on one of his excursions." The way Batman said the word 'excursions' made Kenny think that perhaps Nelson had a habit of disappearing at inconvenient times. "But he's left the Helmet of Fate in my care. Seems to believe the Tower of Fate isn't as secure as he thought. He mentioned you were partially to thank for that."

"Might've been." Considering how he'd apparently done something remarkable when he'd phased his way into the tower, not that he'd known it at the time. Then a point of concern came back to his mind, and Mysterion inquired. "Speaking of magic, how's Raven?"

Nodding, Batman explained amiably. "She's well, from what Zatara tells me. He's considering taking her on as a pupil, to learn magic alongside his daughter."

Raising his eyebrows approvingly, Mysterion smiled slightly and gave his thoughts on the matter. "That's a good idea, that girl could use a friend. A sister."

"She'll have a family, Zatara is an excellent choice for that." From what he had seen of the guy and his daughter they appeared to be a regular, wholesome sort. More so than most people he had known when he was Raven's age.

"What about where she came from?" Mysterion broached the subject, since with all the business of Dr. Fate, the eldritch goings on that had occurred beneath the streets of Gotham not too long go had gone unaddressed. "Have you found anything on that?"

Batman's answer was as straight forward and frank as ever. "No."

Lamenting the way information seemed to be eluding him lately, Kenny shrugged and said. "It's usually like that. These kinds of people are good at disappearing. Most of the time you don't even know they're there until it's too late." Turning his head to gaze down at the police lights and street glow far below them, Kenny felt subtly distant and a little nauseous. "Rats in the walls. One day you hear the scratching, then before you know it the whole house comes falling down…"

They stopped talking, the silence between them only exacerbated by the noise of the city echoing from all around. Kenny felt cold.

"Rats. Fuck 'em." Were his final words of the night, before stepping off of the roof.

The wind whistled past face, a pleasant rush like a bird in flight. It even fired something in his chest, something that let him feel alive before he died. His cape billowed, sound twisted, and he fell into unconsciousness before he even hit the ground.

But not however, before he felt someone grab him around the midriff, and his direct descent arced into a smooth swing upwards. Kenny didn't even care to realise that he was no longer travelling towards terminal velocity, when blood loss overcame him and he ceased to realise anything at all.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—?M?—

 _A/N: I didn't start this chapter expecting it to be 8,000 odd words, but these things just tend to happen, much to my chagrin since it makes them harder to proof read. The first half gave me significant trouble, just in terms of how it creates the geography/location of the scene, but the fight with Joker ended up coming out really smoothly. There's a short section of dialogue in there, between Joker and Mysterion where I used basically no prose to describe it. I was trying something a little different there, since I wanted an interesting way to convey how still that moment was, and how quickly their conversation is bouncing back and forth. Hopefully that came across as such, and not just an ultimately confusing way for me to skimp on writing ;)_

 _I have a Tumblr now, pretty much specifically for things relating to this story, so if you're interested, or have anything you want to share/ask you can find the web address for it on my profile._

 _Until next time.—Faff_


End file.
